Producers: Chris Meledandri and Shigeru Miyamoto   Directors: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic   Screenplay: Matthew Fogel   Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Benny Safdie, Donald Glover, Brie Larson, Issa Rae, Luis Guzmán, Glen Powell, Kevin Michael Richardson, Juliet Jelenic and Ed Skudder    Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C-

The same combination of colorful action for the youngsters and nostalgia for their parents that animated its 2023 predecessor “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” imbues “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”  That should come as no surprise: it’s the work of the previous movie’s creative team, who are clearly aiming to duplicate the enormous financial success they enjoyed in their first go-round with the long-running video game franchise on screen, the 1993 live-action effort having bombed so badly that a reboot attempt took three decades.  Unfortunately, it rivals—indeed, exceeds—its predecessor’s mediocrity, ending up a frantic example of fan service that will leave the uninitiated bewildered and exhausted.   

Inspired by the Nintendo video games of 2007 (“Super Mario Galaxy”) and 2010 {“Super Mario Galaxy 2”) but only loosely, “Galaxy” sends Mario (voiced by Chris Platt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), along with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) of the Mushroom Kingdom into outer space.  Their mission is to rescue Princess Rosaline (Brie Larson), the adoptive mother of the cute-as-a-button Lumas, who’s been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie); he intends sapping her powers to conquer the universe as ruler of the turtle-like Koopas and bring his daddy Bowser (Jack Black), now a prisoner of the Mario Bros., back to the evil side as his confederate in mayhem.

The intrepid trio are not alone in their quest.  The Mario brothers are accompanied by Yoshi (Donald Glover), the little green dinosaur they discover while on a plumbing job in the desert of the Mushroom Kingdom, while tagging along with Peach is her loyal aide Toad (Keegan-Michael Key).  They’ll also be joined by Fox McCloud (Glen Powell), a daredevil spaceship pilot with a lot of Han Solo in him. The Bowsers, meanwhile, get counsel from Kamek (Kevin Michael Richardson), the shadowy hooded figure who helped Junior build his flying city and his horde of massive robots.

The movie is as relentlessly fast-moving as any video game as it sets up the plot and introduces the characters; indeed, one of its few genuinely funny moments comes when it screeches to a halt as Mario and Peach are frustrated by a slow-moving information robot (Ed Skudder) while they’re rushing to get to the next stop on their journey.  But any relief provided by that pause is short-lived; the movie quickly resumes its headlong pace to yet another chase, battle, or brief encounter with yet another character from the franchise, like Honey Queen (Issa Rae) or the frog king Wart (Luis Guzmán), some of whose scenes are depicted in the form of old-style computer graphics, another sop to the fan base.   

Otherwise, the animation is of the blindingly colored, and the gleefully anarchic plot follows video game logic, which is of course nonexistent.  As a result, the makers just throw in whatever set-piece comes to mind: at one point the brothers turn into infants, the reason being…well, there’s actually no reason, except that seeing them as moustache-free kids seems like fun.  No is there any reason why they should decide to crawl all over a sleeping tyrannosaurus, but they do.  What the hey?

The voice cast, moreover, is starry, but for the most part the participants are curiously low-key: even Black sounds oddly subdued.  The major exceptions are Glover and Powell, the former because Yoshi, who could easily become as annoying as Jar Jar Binks, demands broadness, and the latter, perhaps, because for him it’s a major step forward in this side of the business.

But the presence of lots of top-flight talent in the recording booth doesn’t solve the basic problem of “Galaxy”—it’s spiffily made but suffers from a fatal lack of imagination, warmth and charm.  The 1993 movie was terrible, but even it had a spark of humanity lurking underneath the abysmal surface.   This movie, like its predecessor, feels like a soulless machine.  Of course, the 2023 Super Mario reboot grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide, so understandably the makers decided to follow the Joe Bob Briggs rule of sequels, which amounts to: just make the same movie over again.  They have, and will probably be richly rewarded for having done so.    

Producers: Corey Large and Bernie Gewissler   Director: Nicholas Maggio   Screenplay: Nicholas Maggio   Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Stephen Dorff, Ashley Benson, Timothy V. Murphy, Kevin Dillon, John Travolta, Tia Dimartino, Robert Miano, Debra Nelson, Emily Tremaine, Jesse Sharp, Tommy Kendrick, Cal Johnson, King Orba, James Logan and Rob Mars   Distributor: Saban Films

Grade: C-

Every film needs an editor: in the case of this one, it’s Bryan Gaynor, whose IMDB profile lists more than forty past projects on which he’s worked since 2007.  He does a perfectly professional job, cutting the pieces of film together pretty smoothly, even if the overall pacing, apart from one hectic heist sequence, is awfully languid.

But many films really need a second editor—especially one like this, the product of a first-time director working from his own first script.  That editor would surely have advised against elements in the screenplay that were crushingly pretentious and spoken out in favor of speeding up many scenes in which the pauses are so pregnant they almost give birth before the actors resume speaking.

In short, “Mob Land” is a ponderous attempt at a hayseed film noir that insists on italicizing its nihilist view of life in dialogue as well as narrative.  A solid cast struggles to keep its pulse going.

The story is set in a small town near Tupelo, Mississippi, where Shelby Connors (Shiloh Fernandez), a race-car driver with medical issues, is struggling to support his wife Caroline (Ashley Benson and young daughter Mila (Tia Dimartino).  His brother-in-law Trey (Kevin Dillon) eggs him into joining him in robbing a local clinic that’s an opiod distribution center.

Naturally the heist goes badly.  Trey shoots up the place, and in the sloppy getaway, which Shelby was supposed to handle expertly, their car is chased by guys in a pickup truck, guns blazing.  The intervention of Sheriff Bodie Davis (John Travolta), Caroline’s uncle (who, continuing Maggio’s propensity for unremitting bleakness, has just gotten a diagnosis of terminal cancer), sends the truck into a crash that kills its occupants; Trey and Shelby get away with the dough.

Of course, the New Orleans mob that ran the clinic is not about to let the matter rest.  Ellis (Robert Miano) sends his best hit-man Clayton Minor (Stephen Dorff), a stoically menacing type with a penchant for abrupt violence and a dark view of the world he expounds on at the drop of a hat, to recover the money and deal with the robbers.  It doesn’t take him long to track Trey and Shelby down, since they were inept enough to leave a witness behind who, though wounded, lives long enough to give him their names before Minor disposes of him.

Minor eventually gets the information he needs from Trey with nonchalant brutality.  But Shelby he treats more delicately.  Promising not to allow harm to befall his family, whom he’s sent away for their safety, and even to spare his life if he follows orders, Minor takes the unwilling fellow along on his mission, introducing Shelby to set aside what he thinks are his principles to save himself and his own.  He’s teaching his “disciple,” as it were, the truths he holds about this degraded world and human nature. 

Meanwhile Bodie doggedly goes about his work, getting ever closer to the truth despite the missteps of his deputy (Timothy V. Murphy).  His plodding, world-weary manner can’t save everyone—or even anyone, as it turns out.  But the hunting skills he demonstrates in a prologue in which he brings down a deer serve him well in the film’s coda.

There’s the potential in this material for a fast-moving, viscerally exciting thriller, but that’s not what Maggio has in mind, or what he achieves.  He wants “Mob Land” to be a sort of meditation on the grim reality of this slice of Americana, suffused with hopelessness and pain even pills can’t remove, and to that end he supplies some sudden jolts of violence but prefers a grotesquely slow dance of misery and death, festooned with Minor’s pronouncements about the meaninglessness of it all, delivered between his repeated acts of murder and torture.  It makes for a depressing portrait of a dismal human landscape, offers little beyond that.

Within the limitations of that vision, the film features good work from production designer Daphne Hayes, who captures the rundown ambience of the town and Shelby’s homestead, and cinematography by Nick Matthews that manages some arrestingly composed images.  There’s also a score by David Gerald Steinberg that includes interesting touches, like a mournful duet for cello and violin (or a synthesizer simulacrum) near the close.

As for the cast, Dillon and Travolta are at opposite extremes, the former all jittery intensity and the latter utterly reserved, except when jovial with Caroline and Mila.  Dorff does the cool-as-a-cucumber killer bit well enough, even if he never really registers as creepily threatening, and Fernandez makes a sympathetic guy trapped in circumstances that spin out of control.

If you’re looking for a movie that will provide an adrenaline rush, cross “Mob Land” off your list.  If you want to be steeped in gloom and doom, or are a Travolta completest, on the other hand, this is for you.