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If it were not for this week being Super Mario week, this film would not otherwise have made it on to these pages, given that it was released in 1993.
In a similar way to how people generally remark that sequels to films are never as good as the original, there is a similar rule to films that are connected in some way to video games. Most generally tend to end up being classified as stinkers, and the Super Mario Bros film is normally looked on as a classic example of a bad videogame movie.
Looking at the evidence you have to agree, and even the actors who appeared in the film like to distance themselves from it. Bob Hoskins, who played Mario, has publicly stated that he sees this movie as being his biggest mistake of all time, and the late Dennis Hopper (who played King Koopa) wasn’t too fond of it either.
The strange thing about the film is that it has most of the main features of a Mario videogame, but they are all slightly wrong. King Koopa is a humanoid evolved from a dinosaur, rather than being a giant turtle. They chose to use Daisy (who was the damsel in distress from Donkey Kong) rather than Princess Peach as the love interest, and they made her fall in love with Luigi rather than Mario.
The mushroom kingdom is portrayed as a dark, futuristic kind of place, rather than the sugary sweet land of the videogames, and the movie even starts off in our own world, with a plot involving a Mafia group trying to put Mario out of business.
Despite all this though, for some reason I can’t quite bring myself to hate the film. You can almost imagine this is what Super Mario might have been as a videogame if it were to have been invented with today’s videogame consoles in mind.
I left the UK in ’93, and wasn’t terribly happy about it. I was 11 years old and the idea of leaving all my friends behind just as they were all moving up to secondary school, and then having to make the move to secondary school myself not knowing anybody in my new home (Antigua)… well, it was pretty daunting.
One of my last hurrahs with all my old friends was a trip to the pictures to see this movie, and we were all super-excited for it as we were all big video game fans (even if I was more of a Sega guy).
Well I have to say we all loved the movie. In retrospect it was probably pretty crappy, but I really have fond memories of it (same deal with Jurassic Park!). I even remember liking the end-credits song, which I believe was by Roxette!