Castle Magus

Just saw it, finally. Eh, it was okay. It was as much a Donkey Kong, a Super Mario Kart, and kind of a Super Smash Bros. movie as it was a Super Mario Bros. movie.

I didn't care for the fact that Luigi was just Bowser's prisoner for the vast majority of the movie, though. (The Luma stole the prisoner scenes, at least.) I did like that Peach did not occupy that role for the whole movie, however. Peach was pretty badass. The overall plot was mostly kinda basic, though, even for a movie based on Mario games. The movie didn't really start for me until they actually got to the Mushroom Kingdom. All the "real world" stuff before that was mostly a pass for me.

Chris Pratt's voice did not make me hate the movie. He's no Charles Martinet or even Lou Albano, but I guess he was more Mario than Bob Hoskins was? (I still liked the live action movie for what it was, even so, but whatever.) Peach's voice was a bit jarring for the first minute or so, but then it was fine. Jack Black's Bowser was pretty good... until he started singing. Then he just sounded like Tenacious D, which isn't necessarily bad, but it just didn't feel like Bowser at that point. And... Luigi was fine. All the other voices were passable.

I appreciated it when they played music from the games, particularly during the end credits. They even used the Super Mario Bros Super Show theme for a bit at one point. However, whenever the movie decided to trot out some bland, generic ass-pop song, it just took me right out of it during those bits.

And... not sure what the deal was with the Yoshi stinger, given that they briefly showed a whole bunch of Yoshis earlier in the movie. *shrug*

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Another video with two guys complaining about Chris Pratt as Mario, with which I agree pretty much, and for closer to the same reasons they state here, as opposed to "Chris Pratt's halfassed Brooklyn accent actually offends me" or whatever. Though, again, I really couldn't care less about the size or lack thereof of Mario's ass, with which Woolie seems fixated.

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"Chris Pratt brings the star power." No, you see, the fictional character Mario is, himself, already a much bigger star than Chris Pratt is or ever will be. That is to say, I'm certain that more people in the world are familiar with Mario than have ever heard of Chris Pratt. (EDIT) Chris Pratt simply has the incredible luck of just happening to be one of the current flavor-of-the-month Big Name Actors™ at the time when Nintendo was interested in letting someone do a Mario movie. If this movie had been made ten years ago, we probably would've gotten Shia LaBeouf or whoever else happened to be the most over-exposed actor at the time voicing Mario. (/EDIT)

If anything, Chris Pratt diminishes Mario, here, rather than elevating him. Should've gotten someone, anyone, who can actually at least sort of fit the part, the way that Jack Black does with Bowser, even if you're not going full-on Charles Martinet for the whole movie (which, I agree, probably wouldn't be sustainable, even if it were literally Charles Martinet himself doing it), even a non-famous voice actor who can actually voice act, (EDIT) like, again, Charles fucking Martinet, a guy who has much more range than just "Yahoo it'sa me!" and probably could have easily done a "game Mario, but toned down a bit for movie purposes" voice if he'd been given a chance, (/EDIT) rather than Chris Pratt just being Chris Pratt for the whole damn movie. If Bob Hoskins was able to do it, hell, if fucking Lou Albano was able to do it, why is Chris Pratt seemingly unable to do it? (EDIT) The problem here isn't "Chris Pratt doesn't sound like Mario." The problem here is "Mario sounds too much like basic, default, banal Chris Pratt." (/EDIT)

Or maybe they just decided, for whatever inane reason, to pick the two worst, most... Chris Pratt-ish lines for the trailer, and the rest may be fine, but then... I've already made my opinions about movie trailers known before (i.e. they should make you want to see the movie, instead of, you know, the exact opposite of that).

With all that said, though, if the worst thing about this Mario movie is Chris Pratt's voice and the size (or lack thereof) of Mario's ass, then it probably will be doing extremely well.

Meh, I might watch this movie some day, but I'm not gonna go out of my way to see it. I still haven't bothered to see either of the Sonic movies yet, either, even though I hear they're not entirely terrible.