Review: Super Mario Bros

Two Brooklyn plumbers – and brothers – named Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) attempt to rescue a palaeontology student named Daisy (Samantha) kidnapped by goons and taken to another dimension. Said dimension is home to dinosaurs that escaped their fate on earth 65 million years ago and have evolved into humanoids. They are led by King Koopa (Dennis Hopper) who believes Daisy is some kind of princess and a descendant of the dinosaurs on Dinohattan. Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson play Koopa’s idiot cousins/henchmen Iggy and Spike – The Goombas. Fiona Shaw plays Koopa’s moll, whilst a predominantly unrecognisable Lance Henriksen plays Daisy’s father Bowser, former king of Dinohattan.

 

Notorious 1993 film adaptation of the popular Nintendo video game franchise that started with “Donkey Kong”. I was never a Nintendo guy. My only first-hand experience with the franchise was “Donkey Kong” on one of those Game & Watch things as a kid. I was a Commodore 64 guy, so I never bothered seeing this big screen outing until recently. It was apparently a very troubled shoot, with co-directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton (creators of “Max Headroom” and the directors of several music videos) were a husband-and-wife duo said to be arrogant and hellacious to work for. They were even working against each other at times, making changes without telling the other. The script they originally planned on working from was ordered by the studio to be rewritten as a children’s film without their input. Co-stars Dennis Hopper, Fiona Shaw, and Bob Hoskins signed on specifically because of that supposedly more intelligent script that was thrown out by the studio. Meanwhile, Hoskins and co-lead John Leguizamo resorted to drinking in order to get through the tough shoot. Also, it’s got Dennis Hopper in the cast and everyone knows he could be a handful even in his post-drugs period. It’s a helluva behind-the-scenes story, but is the film itself as bad as the struggle to make it? Well, there were actually elements that I enjoyed here, enough that it isn’t entirely awful. That’s a long way from being good, though.

 

The two leads are likeable, and the The Goombas played by Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson are perfect dum-dum henchmen. They haven’t a brain cell between them. The score by Alan Silvestri (“Young Guns II”, “Forrest Gump”) works really, really hard too, if being a little too reminiscent of Danny Elfman’s “Batman” score. On the downside, this is quite possibly the least interesting performance Dennis Hopper ever gave. As villain King Koopa, he’s fatuous and stock-standard. Even worse are Samantha Mathis and a stiff named Gianni Russo as a mob guy. They’re awfully unconvincing.

 

You can certainly see why it didn’t go down well with critics or audiences, there’s just no energy or life to it beyond that music score. Very little action too, strangely enough. You’d think the film would be full of jumping and running and giant mushrooms, right? Also, until very far into the film there’s not much in the way of plot either, and what plot we do get is stupid. There sure is plenty of talk though, which is all very curious given this was meant to be the version geared towards kids. By the time this thing delivers the mushrooms and acts like a video game adaptation 90 minutes have already passed! That’s 75 minutes too late. You can definitely see the struggle between different visions here, and I don’t think either side wholly won out. While not a disaster, it certainly is a mess. I think the producers were right to bring in the script doctors and gear this towards kids and gamers, but on evidence here not enough doctoring was done. The whole thing is talky, slow, and meandering. I have to say it surprises me that two people with experience in music videos have taken a rather colourful, action-filled video game and turned it into post-apocalyptic gloom. I bet gamers at the time were unhappy about that, not to mention apparently the film’s producers.

 

Forgettable video game adaptation doesn’t even deliver on an action front. The two leads are likeable, the score is good, the film is subpar. There are elements here that could’ve led somewhere, but the story sucks and so does the pacing. Although originally written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, their screenplay was scrapped and the credited screenwriters are Ed Solomon (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Now You See Me”), Parker Bennett (“Mystery Date”), and the late Terry Runte (ditto).

 

Rating: C