Gaming The System: Was the Super Mario Bros. movie all that bad?

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The Video Game Movie. Just the mere thought of it sends shivers down the spines of movie and gaming fans.

Often considered a testament to the greed of capitalism, the desperate exploitation of a popular commodity, the Video Game Movie has often had very little — or too much — to do with the franchise it's based on, but either way, the results are disastrous.

One franchise often considered the most battered victim of such shameless pandering is the Mario franchise, with the 1993 exact-opposite- of-smash-hit Super Mario Bros. Panned pretty much all across the board by critics, even the cast themselves jumped into the fray to sock the movie in the jaw, with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo calling it the worst movie they ever worked on. Really, one would get the impression that the Mario Bros. movie is a forget-and-abandon scenario, never to be touched upon for any reason other than to serve as a reminder of humanity's cinematic follies.

Believe it or not, though, this movie really ISN'T the worst thing ever.

Okay, let's start with the meat of any movie: the story and setting. The film's universe, one where a parallel dimension exists where humans are direct descendants of dinosaurs living in a dystopian universe, has been blasted for being bizarre and illogical. Yeah, so what? Exactly WHAT could you draw from a video game whose premise is, “Princess kidnapped, stomp on various creatures that get in your way to solve the problem”? Zilch. Nothing. And if you think the animated shows could serve as a basis for a feature-length movie (or seven), you're probably damaged. Super Mario Bros.' premise is strange, but strange doesn't always equal bad. The Koopaverse, as it's known, is a dark, dirty, overcrowded Orwellian nightmare crawling with disenfranchised dino-humans. It doesn't languish itself completely in its misery.

Granted, Super Mario Bros. was made in a strange time in the '90s where established franchises were adapted into live-action films using new-fangled CG special effects; the saying, “Just because you can, doesn't mean you should,” comes to mind. It was, after all, the decade that gave us that live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close. Logically, Super Mario Bros. should've been a cut-and-clean animated film, but going the live action route let them make everything a whole lot grittier. No matter your opinion of the film, denying the awesomeness of the film's art direction would be bald-faced lies. The Koopaverse is a strange place, and they certainly didn't half-ass the execution. It's fantastically science-fiction-y, with an almost cyberpunk/Blade Runnerlike air to it. Every bit of technology in the film looks like it was improvised from bits of other broken junk, a true testament to the dying world of the Koopaverse. If anything, the movie should at least get points for eye-candy and creativity.

Hiring an Englishman and a Colombian to play two streetwise Italian plumbers may seem questionable, but Hoskins and Leguizamo pretty much nail what you would expect Mario and Luigi to be like in real life. And despite the role being one of his many mistakes of the '90s (the other, of course, being the spectacular failure Waterworld), Dennis Hopper as King Koopa/Bowser, the ruler of this crapsack world, somehow nails it though being a combination of ruthless CEO and giant ham. The extremely corny approach to their roles, and their lack of taking it seriously, curries in some real favors for the entertainment value.

In the end, enjoying this movie can be relatively easy, provided you don't go in expecting an amazing, life-changing movie experience. Try to stop being so serious, dammit, it helps.