It's a sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), which I haven't seen. It's a movie adaptation of Nintendo's gaming franchises (primarily but not exclusively Mario), which I don't play. Its story comes from the 2007 video game Super Mario Galaxy and its 2010 sequel, which I'd never heard of until I looked them up just now. Yeah, I've been taking children to the cinema again. That said, though, I was actually familiar with the characters. I'd absorbed them through pop culture osmosis, e.g. third-hand awareness of the 1993 Mario movie with Bob Hoskins. Also, sometimes at home we play the Mario version of Monopoly (surprisingly interesting, being a completely new game only loosely based on original Monopoly) and Super Mario Labyrinth (which is lots of fun, but as far as I can tell is pretty much identical to Ravensburger's original 1986 Labyrinth board game). When doing so, though, I tend to give the characters silly new names. Toad, for instance, is Horrendous Head Injuries. (Look at a picture of him and tell me that doesn't fit. That's a huge bandage with circular blood patches, surely?)

So, that I had. This film is a celebration of these iconic characters... which I could connect with. I'd glanced at a few reviews beforehand and, to be honest, some strike me as kind of snotty. This is a high-energy film with lots of energy, amusing character interactions and cool game-based action scenes that's completely unlike the kind of action you normally see in movies.

The only thing it doesn't have is a storyline worth a damn. Natsuki suggested afterwards that it might have worked better as a TV series, which is a clever observation. The film's just a grab-bag of fun scenes, iconic characters and truly gorgeous CGI animation. Plot? Who needs that? There's a baddie who's presumably up to something, when the writers can be bothered to get around to him. The film's best character is Bowser in the first half, who gets an interesting character arc... until this gets abandoned when he just becomes the baddie's sidekick in the second half. Imagine a less interesting echo of Jim Carrey's double role as the father-and-son Dr Robotniks in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. There are also throwaway missed opportunities like Toad's one-sided dislike of Yoshi, which could have yielded a character arc (e.g. in the Fossil Falls action segment) but doesn't. The original Nintendo games had wilder plotting than this, e.g. the universe getting destroyed, then recreated.

I'm afraid my eyes closed a few times. You could call the film's more soporific moments sound and fury signifying nothing. However, "great" was the majority view of our party afterwards, including one adult (my sister), and there were definitely things I liked.

1. Bowser's funny. He's Mario's mortal foe, with a hair-trigger temper... but he got shrunk in the last film and now they keep him in a doll's house. He says he's reformed. Can they trust him? Oddly, up to a point, yes. Furthermore, the Bowser of the original games is both Mario's arch-enemy and a friend with whom they sometimes play go-karting and tennis. (He also keeps kidnapping princesses, admittedly.)

2. I liked the Mario-Peach relationship, which is good since they're the main heroes. (Yes, Peach gets more focus than Luigi.) Also, I've heard that their portrayals have improved from the first film (but I can't vouch for that personally), with Chris Pratt being more Mario-like and Princess Peach being kinder and sweeter this time, e.g. having smiles that aren't smirks.

3. The stuff that resembles Star Wars (alien planets, spaceships, etc.) is gorgeous. That was wonderful to look at, especially when they throw in game-inspired ideas like the inconsistent artificial gravity on the casino station. They even play around with the art style, e.g. occasional 1980s Nintendo 8-bit game visuals. Incidentally, the Han Solo fox pilot is a character from another game. My only grumble with the slick CGI is that it looks unnatural on human-like characters, given their big-eyed manga-like designs. This film would have been better with 2D hand-drawn animation (and it even includes a hand-drawn sequence to prove this). Unfortunately, 2D animation is dying in the West and I've heard that even Disney would struggle to make a film like that these days.

4. The film's action finale is brilliant. Completely at right angles to normal action movies, because it's doing stuff from the games (and underlining this with 8-bit game screens).

Scene by scene, there's plenty of cool stuff here. The film's worth a look, I think... in the background, while something more important takes half of your attention. You'll have played worse things on your TV. There are moments when the light tone undercuts macho dialogue and makes the characters look like posers, but I'm nitpicking there. Some characters are just walking gimmicks, e.g. Yoshi just eats things... but I quite liked him and I thought the cartoonish approach there succeeded. Yes, the film's shallow. It couldn't be less interested in character-driven storytelling, or meaningful plotting. However, I'm glad they didn't dig deeper into the "FATHER!!! MY SON!!!" relationship of the two Bowsers, sparing us an entire genre of Hollywood cliches. It also has meatier villainy than, say, modern Disney. As modern children's films go, I'd call it comfortably above average.