I just got the 4K UHD Blu-Ray the other day and have been engorging myself on all the Mario and Nintendo references. I definitely see the aspects where the 50% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes make sense. But I’m not a diehard film critic, nor was I expecting something deep out of a movie based on a game series that historically never relies on plot to be enjoyable. It is a visual theme park in the purest sense, taking you on a whirlwind tour of all things Super Mario in the hopes that you’ll eventually pick up a Nintendo Switch for yourself or your kids down the line. And I didn’t really mind.
My favorite aspect of the film has to be Jack Black’s interactions with other characters as Bowser. His performance on its own was unsurprisingly fantastic, but it’s the way he interacts with characters like Luigi and Kamek that really got a rise out of me. When Luigi put in the good word for his brother while being interrogated by a comically down bad Bowser, I legit laughed out loud. Easily the funniest exchange in the whole movie for me.
Conversely my least favorite aspect of the movie was the excessive and distracting use of licensed music. While it is kinda neat that they’re all 80s tracks to keep things thematically consistent, none of them really land for me in the context of the film. A-ha’s “Take On Me” in particular was the worst offender, when they clearly had a more appropriate song ready that was cut at the last minute. [Here’s an edit](https://youtu.be/hELsKr5-gh4?feature=shared) that restores that cut song, and just try and tell me that “Take On Me” was a better song choice.
by Asad_Farooqui