UPDATE (7/23/2015): Once again, the real Cinema Sins has now done this one. I’m going to be stuck with nothing but Disney animated films at this rate…
(Time once again for another shameless ripoff of Cinema Sins. They’re on Youtube and they’re great. Lots of good movies that are not without sin and done a lot better than I can. I recommend them highly.)
For the movie that launched a long, illustrious chain of horrendous video game movie adaptations that has continued uninterrupted to the present day…
Everything.
Wrong.
With.
“SUPER MARIO BROS.: THE MOVIE”
In the Time It Takes You to Read This or Less.
SPOILERS!
(Duh)
This movie was made.
SIN COUNT: 1
NARRATOR: A long time ago, there were dinosaurs…
Narration.
SIN COUNT: 2
NARRATOR: What if the impact of that meteor created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious, and aggressive beings…just like us? And hey…what if they found a way back?
The producers of this film thought this premise sounded more realistic and sellable than a plumber in Brooklyn falling into a pipe and ending up in a Mushroom Kingdom being invaded by turtle creatures, cloud guys throwing spiky critters, and bullets with faces on it…and they were wrong.
SIN COUNT: 3
Dinosaur queen somehow knows what a nunnery is and that this is a good place to take infants.
SIN COUNT: 4
While it’s kind of neat that the humanoid dinosaurs would still be born from eggs, there is no way that woman got this egg out of her you-know-where.
SIN COUNT: 5
Princess Daisy had only appeared in “Super Mario Land” before this movie, and now she appears in pretty much every game… Good lord, this movie gave Daisy more notoriety.
SIN COUNT: 6
Most forced accessory bad guy in a movie ever. Scapelli apparently runs the vast and lucrative “plumbing racket” in New York City.
SIN COUNT: 7
In a movie where Dinohattan is going to be loaded with hidden and unreadable references to Mario games, movie ignores an obvious one and names her Danielle instead of Pauline…or Toadstool (that’s right, Toadstool…not Peach).
SIN COUNT: 8
Movie downsizing. Seven Koopling Kids are reduced to two idiots. And one of them is the interchangeable one. Be honest…you get Iggy and Lemmy mixed up all the time, don’t you?
SIN COUNT: 9
The archaeological dig is so revolutionary and new that no one has noticed it prior to now in spite of the fact water pipes have obviously been installed nearby years ago.
SIN COUNT: 10
MARIO: Scapelli!
And the motivation for getting Mario into the plot is to make him mortal enemies with the local plumbing racket boss. …You’ve accepted the dinosaur parallel dimension until this point, so you have no reason to complain if you haven’t left the theater yet.
SIN COUNT: 11
In a moment we’ll see that Daisy has to pass through a vast network of bad CGI fractal art in order to poke her face out through these rocks, so is her upper torso and the arms of Iggy and Spike just disembodied-ly reaching through space in this scene?
SIN COUNT: 12
Ok, so Mario can pull off some video-game physics moves, because there is no way he rotated around his own axis to go through this portal upside down any other way.
SIN COUNT: 13
We spent 90% of this movie’s budget on crappy early-90s CGI and, by god, we’re going to put a pointless CGI sequence in every spot we can get one.
SIN COUNT: 14
Well, they warped…and there was a pipe nearby…so I guess that counts as a “warp pipe”…
SIN COUNT: 15
Alright, finally in the other world! Can’t wait to see what amazing rendition they have of the colorful and fantastic worlds that feature in the “Super Mario Bros.” franchise and…
(Normal looking Dinohattan appears on screen)
…F**k.
SIN COUNT: 16
So…all the different species of dinosaur eventually evolved to become humanoid? I’m a biologist and I know convergent evolution does occur, but…this kind of screws the principle of parsimony.
SIN COUNT: 17
Apparently the actual Bowser being a big, mean, turtle-dragon somehow screamed to the screenwriters: “Neat Freak!”
SIN COUNT: 18
Lena abruptly rattles her head because…humanoid dinosaurs!
SIN COUNT: 19
KOOPA: The meteorite piece that she wears around her neck! I told you not to forget it!
Wait…Koopa knows that Daisy wears the rock around her neck. How would he know that? He hasn’t seen her since she was an egg and the entrance has supposedly been sealed for years. Did he send someone through the portal earlier who was intelligent enough to keep tabs on her for a while? Obviously it wasn’t Iggy and Spike because they were too stupid to even know who she was until they finally got lucky.
SIN COUNT: 20
KOOPA: “Plumber alert.”
Did Koopa actually make that up on the fly? Or was there some sort of “Great Plumber Rebellion” that necessitated there to be an actual “plumber alert” on the books?
SIN COUNT: 21
(The Koopa-Koin bounty is announced.)
Wow! You could buy 10 extra lives with that!
SIN COUNT: 22
(Seeing the Stompers for the first time.)
So…this is the replacement for a feather…or is it a starman? Or a flower? Or Kurubu’s Shoe? F**k it…it’s a sin.
SIN COUNT: 23
(Cops pull up as soon as Toad finishes his song.)
Cops have perfect timing.
SIN COUNT: 24
(After the “Mario Mario” exchange with the police officer…)
Good lord…something else that became “game canon” from this movie…
SIN COUNT: 25
Enjoy the “de-fungusing” because it’s only one of many, many useless and impractical inventions in this world.
SIN COUNT: 26
Mug shot cameras need laser guides because…um…humanoid dinosaurs!
SIN COUNT: 27
KOOPA: Goomba!
No self-respecting gamer would call this a goomba. Most impractical and poorly-conceived minion in the world, maybe. And he definitely can’t run and jump faster than anyone else in the cast.
SIN COUNT: 28
LUIGI: That’s Toad?!
Luigi quotes everyone in the theater when they first heard this character called “Toad”.
SIN COUNT: 29
(Goomba Toad gets his harmonica from another Goomba.)
Because even though we’ve devolved you into a half-hominid dinosaur stormtrooper, that doesn’t mean we should stand in the way of your progress toward a career in music.
SIN COUNT: 30
Koopa doesn’t get fully devolved at once because, damnit, MORE MORPHING CGI! Keep putting it in and eventually the movie will make money! It has to!
SIN COUNT: 31
Everyone uses a fireball flamethrower. Get it? Because you shoot fireballs in the game! Ha! Glad to see they kept that part of the game in the movie…and absolutely nothing else.
SIN COUNT: 32
Luigi somehow knows how to drive car from playing video games. Assuming he and Mario could afford an SNES (1993 remember), that’s still only six buttons and a D-pad. I’m calling bullsh’t on this one.
SIN COUNT: 33
Movie downsizing. Eight worlds in “Super Mario Bros. 3” is now just…the Koophara Desert.
SIN COUNT: 34
KOOPA: And let me tell you something. You can go ahead and choke this little “Mushroom Kingdom” all you want…
Ladies and gentlemen, the sole reason for the whole “king got turned into fungus” subplot was so that King Koopa could do this one line to make the few gamers in the audience who weren’t asleep say: “Oh! Just like in the game! Du-huh!”
SIN COUNT: 35
Also, I’m pretty sure that every evolutionary biologist in the world will tell you fungus and dinosaurs are on two completely separate lineages. Unless the fungus of this world also became humanoid at some point.
SIN COUNT: 36
(On seeing small raptor-like dinosaur)
Don’t say that’s his name… Don’t say that’s his name… Don’t say that’s his name… Don’t say that’s his name…
KOOPA: Yoshi is the pet of the royal family.
…F**k.
SIN COUNT: 37
(Koopa’s eyebrow morphs)
Damnit, MORE MORPHING CGI! Believe in its power to sell tickets!
SIN COUNT: 38
(After Iggy and Spike crash their vehicle in the desert)
Are these two actually smarter? Or did “Advanced” merely give them higher vocabulary and math skills?
SIN COUNT: 39
LUIGI: Aw man, I lost all my tools!
Here’s items you’ll never see popping out of “?” block in the game.
SIN COUNT: 40
Believe it or not, “Walk the Dinosaur” became a hit because of this movie. Well, maybe not a hit, but…played on the radio. Ok, maybe not played on the radio, but…people knew what it was… Alright! It made it into the end credits of the third “Ice Age” movie, which had ten times the viewers of this film!
SIN COUNT: 41
(In the Boom Boom Bar)
SPIKE: My friends! To the downfall of Koopa!
IGGY: The sooner the better!
Wait…just about five minutes ago, these two were all…
IGGY: Then our cousin Koopa will rule both our worlds!
BOTH: (Evil laugh)
Did Mario and Luigi have a major discussion with them on the Sludgegulper over the virtues of democracy? Or did their intelligence suddenly hit the point of awareness of morality?
SIN COUNT: 42
Only actual part of a Super Mario Bros. game, namely the entrance to the Valley of Bowser in “Super Mario World”, appears in the movie only to be turned into a screen saver for the background of the Boom Boom Bar.
SIN COUNT: 43
MARIO: Excuse me, but could you hit me again?
This works.
SIN COUNT: 44
So, a fresh cartridge inside a set of Stompers enables the wearer to…jump once or twice a distance of about a hundred feet. …Huh. Apparently there’s a big market for them in Dinohattan. Everyone wants the sensation of…wearing a very inefficient jetpack…on their feet…
SIN COUNT: 45
Mario and Luigi change their clothes suddenly because…they need to look more like the actual Mario Brothers! And they left on the now-useless Stompers so they could make a good picture for the poster art!
SIN COUNT: 46
(Goombas fill up the elevator without ever noticing Mario and Luigi.)
Dumbest. Minions. Ever.
SIN COUNT: 47
…On the Slowest. Elevator. Ever.
SIN COUNT: 48
(Goombas start dancing to “Somewhere My Love”.)
Not sure whether Goombas spontaneously dancing whenever they hear this song is the sin…or the fact “Doctor Zhivago” exists in this universe is the sin… F**k it, sin ’em both.
SIN COUNT: 50
KOOPA: Are the Goombas training with the hand-held de-evolution guns?
Because we’ve still got 500 crates of never-sold Super Scope 6’s to break open yet.
SIN COUNT: 51
The movie that dares to include a “Pizza Delivery” subplot.
SIN COUNT: 52
Also, you can taunt Saddam Hussein all you want for building so many monuments and palaces to himself, but even HE never displayed such hubris as to name the pizza special after himself.
SIN COUNT: 53
KOOPA: We can talk about this later, if later even occurs!
Character Too Upset To Listen To Crucial Plot Information Cliche.
SIN COUNT: 54
(Yoshi stops Lena using his tongue flick.)
Hope that’ll do you for any actual ‘Yoshi action’ you planned to see in this movie, because this was kind of like putting Darth Vader in a film without a lightsaber.
SIN COUNT: 55
Those Goombas sure took their sweet time executing Iggy and Spike. They got taken away when Lena was still arguing with Koopa, and only now after that struggle back where Daisy was being held are they bringing those two up here.
SIN COUNT: 56
And Iggy and Spike…disappear. Where? Maybe another cosmic warp pipe rock meteor plot device wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
SIN COUNT: 57
Yoshi falls into the same thing about five minutes later.
SIN COUNT: 58
Movie downsizing. The seven princesses Link had to journey the world to save in “A Link to the Past” are now reduced to five all in the same sp…wait a second! That’s the wrong game! That’s two sins!
SIN COUNT: 60
We later find out the Bob-Omb is only capable of an explosion about the size of a hand grenade, yet everyone is fleeing as if Mario just pulled out a thermonuclear warhead loaded with anthrax and radioactive ebola.
SIN COUNT: 61
KOOPA: …Bob-Omb…
SIN COUNT: 62
(After Lena’s death)
Wait, the whole reason Koopa wanted the princess was just so someone could put the rock back in the meteor without dying in the process? He couldn’t just get a minion to do it? It’s not like he actually cares one way or another.
SIN COUNT: 63
LUIGI: Wow, she sure leaves an impression.
Luigi thinks he’s James Bond.
SIN COUNT: 64
Obviously in Dinohattan they’ve never heard of things like tanks, destroyers, cruise missiles, F/A-18s, or predator drones…all of which are things that would be able to take out a force of a few hundred Goombas with de-evolution guns without ever producing a target.
SIN COUNT: 65
(After Scapelli gets de-volved and the crowd starts laughing)
Ha-ha! Seeing a man get horribly turned into a chimpanzee-like creature before our eyes is hilarious! I can’t wait to see which of us is next!
SIN COUNT: 66
KOOPA: Monkey!
Yes, yes it is. It starts with the letter ‘M’.
SIN COUNT: 67
Hold on, does Reebok produce Bob-Ombs? …And do they exist in Dinohattan?
SIN COUNT: 68
Oh, these guns don’t devolve people. They turn them into bad puppets.
SIN COUNT: 69
And the second Koopa is gone, everyone rejoices, indicating everyone hated him yet did everything he said. I guess they all always thought that everyone else liked him so they never tried to revolt.
SIN COUNT: 70
The fungus unexpectedly turns back into the king after Koopa is gone. Why? Honestly, I’m wondering more how this is 1993 and they managed to talk Lance Hendrickson into putting that outfit on and giving two lines in this movie.
SIN COUNT: 71
So…just going to leave Toad like that? That machine can “evolve” him back to normal, you know. It has a setting for “Now” and everything… Or maybe he’s happier being a Goomba. Finally gives him that bass tone he always wanted.
SIN COUNT: 72
ANNOUNCER: I’d call them the “Super Mario Brothers”!
And I’d call that the weakest plug at the name of the movie I’ve ever seen. Also, roll credits.
SIN COUNT: 73
Plus, we saw earlier that the World Trade Center towers literally turned into Koopa’s Towers for a moment. Absolutely no one in New York City noticed that aside from these tabloid reporters? Who for some reason were at the exact place Koopa and the Goombas appeared?
SIN COUNT: 74
DAISY: You’re not going to believe this!
No, I sure wouldn’t. And neither would anyone else, because everyone had already gone home and didn’t care to find out.
SIN COUNT: 75
Mario and Luigi’s tools are magically back.
SIN COUNT: 76
(End credit sequence)
This isn’t a joking matter. They could have made a game out of this movie and caused the world ten times as much pain…like they did with “Street Fighter”.
SIN COUNT: 77
After seeing this, some people still think a “Legend of Zelda” movie is a good idea.
SIN COUNT: 78
FINAL COUNT: 78
SENTENCE: DE-VOLVED TO THE TRIASSIC PERIOD (I always knew he’d make an excellent Goomba!)