The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an 86-minute-long animated film about - you guessed it - the Mario brothers.

Going into this movie, I didn’t expect much. A fairly short movie, with two-dimensional characters and absolutely crazy voice actor casting choices. I was completely surprised to see Chris Pratt, somebody with an American accent, play the role of Mario, who as we know is Italian. In terms of his actual performance in the movie… Well, we’ll get to that later.

As the film began, I was pretty excited. After the opening credits, I got to witness some of the best animation quality I have seen from Illumination (the popular movie studio that made this movie and many others). The animation was amazing, with details and effects being used to near-perfection, achieving pure visual sharpness. 

The voice acting wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, with the trailers depicting Mario using a New York accent and botched catchphrases. However, Chris Pratt managed to put on an above-average performance as Mario. The other voice actors were competent too, but I am specifically bringing up Chris because he defied my expectations. 

The story is pretty two-dimensional, since it is a movie designed for younger children. The main story is that Bowser is going after the Power Star, and Mario and Peach are there to stop him.

My main problem with the movie is the pacing. It is not very good. The writers of this movie tried to cram around ten major settings into an hour-and-a-half. It’s nearly impossible to give any of the characters emotional development, and the story seems too fast-paced. It’s certainly too fast to really appreciate the good animation throughout the movie.

Despite the pacing problems, the movie was still a very fun experience in my opinion. The amount of clever references, jokes, and beautiful scenes (when not rushed through) were great. If I had to rate this movie, I would give it a very strong 80%.