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.