The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Honestly, I'm surprised. I had heard so many mixed things about this film, and while I have things to say, both positive and negative, the reactions are largely overblown. I'm very excited to talk about this one, so let's dive right in!

The story of this film is about Mario (played by Chris Pratt), Luigi (played by Charlie Day), Peach (played by Anya Taylor Joy), Toad (played by Keegan Michael Key), and new friend Yoshi (played to perfection by Donald Glover) teaming up to rescue Rosalina (played by Brie Larson) from Bowser Jr. (played by Benny Safdie) who is also intent on rescuing his father Bowser (played by Jack Black).

Now, as can be seen, there is quite a lot going on in this hour and a half or so movie, and that is great and not so great at the same time. The good part is there is so many good elements from Super Mario Galaxy shown here, such as a recreation of the iconic UFO scene, but the problem comes from the film's breakneck pacing where there probably should have been some moments to breathe throughout.

There was surprisingly a sequence in Fossil Falls (a dinosaur based planet) that felt entirely superfluous and didn't add anything to the story, which was unnecessary padding in a film that, for all intents and purposes, didn't need it due to being stuffed to the rafters with characters and references. In fact, it's almost overwhelming at times, the pace with which the references come your way.

Now, there was a couple of issues I had outside of the pacing, and that includes the fact that Rosalina was reduced to a damsel in distress and had little to no screentime as a result. In fact, some other characters not really related to the core story had more screentime and that felt...weird, considering how central Rosalina was to the original Galaxy game. I also took issue with the fact that there were random references that were just there so people could point and say "I recognize that!" It wasn't as bad in the first film, but they took this element up to eleven in this one.

Overall, this film was still a generally fun and enjoyable time, but definitely not as fresh or tight as its predecessor. If you like Mario games, and you enjoyed the first film, you'll probably like this one. I only hope that they can find a balance of characters and story for the inevitable third film.

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