Review: Super Mario Bros. (1993)

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Super Mario Bros., the 1993 live action adaptation of the Nintendo video games, is one of the worst movies I’ve seen. This is coming from someone not unknown to reappraise critical stinkers from the 1980s and 1990s (Cocktail, anyone?). But whatever cult status this movie deserves should be due to its astonishing badness, as well as, perhaps, its attraction as a hard-to-find item. Given the enormous success of Nintendo and Illumination’s new animated adaptations, The Super Mario Brothers Movie (2023) and this year’s sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo has been trying to bury the old film by keeping it off of major streaming platforms.

I never saw the movie as a child, but I do remember the silver-on-black VHS cover. I also recall being immensely dismayed to discover that they had turned the fun cartoony video game into a bizarre live-action adventure, with the detective from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Bob Hoskins) as Mario, and some strange old man as the villain (Dennis Hopper), instead of the turtle-like monster, Bowser. What I did not fully understand until now was that Dennis Hopper’s President Koopa isn’t actually a human being at all: he’s a humanoid dinosaur. Yes, basically a reptoid. 

Now stop smirking and let me explain. Koopa looks like a human, and is given spiked hair (I suppose to recall Bowser’s spiked shell). On occasion, his face flashes reptilian. Why? Because when the proverbial meteorite smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, what actually happened was that many dinosaurs were sent into a parallel dimension that had splintered off from ours. In this parallel dimension, dinosaurs instead of mammals thrived and evolved into what is essentially the human race. Nevertheless, we still see mothers carting around their baby eggs, and Koopa frequently conveys his racist disgust, and plethora of insults, for mammals.  

In this movie version, the Mushroom Kingdom is a dystopia full of evolved dinosaurs, with a vast desert (the Koopahari Desert) outside the one mega city (Dinohattan), all ruled by the tyrannical businessman-politician, President Koopa. Koopa is also a usurper, as he seized power from the Mushroom King (Lance Henriksen). When he did so, the king’s daughter, Princess Daisy, was smuggled into our dimension, and there grew up among human nuns, unaware of her past. As an adult (played by Samantha Mathis), Daisy is a paleontologist (wink, wink), who, through a series of mishaps, falls in with the Mario Brothers (Hoskins’ Mario and John Leguizamo’s Luigi). Mario Mario and Luigi Mario (yes, Mario is their last name) are just ordinary, if underemployed, plumbers. Of course, the plumber duo and the secret princess will find their way into the dinosaur dimension and save the day. 

My impression is that the filmmakers—husband-and-wife directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel (who made music videos and TV commercials in the 1980s and together created Max Headroom), and screenwriters Parker Bennett, Terry Runté, and Ed Solomon—conceived of Super Mario Bros. as a subversive reimagining of the Nintendo property. I would assume that the Dinosaur Land setting of Super Mario World (the 1990s video game for the Super Nintendo) inspired the film’s dinosaur premise. Whatever the case, this is a great example of originality not equalling quality. Yes, reimagining the Super Mario Brothers in a live action cyberpunk fantasy adventure is original. But was it a good choice for an adaptation? Not at all. The film is atrocious conceptually—all bad ideas, even on paper. What’s worse, when the concepts are visualized on screen, they are often downright repulsive. Some of the film’s designs are among the ugliest things I’ve seen in any movie. 

For example, take the Goombas. Someone thought it was a good idea to reimagine the rotund mushroom-like minions as semi-humanoid dinosaurs, with hulking, lurching bodies and shrunken dinosaur-like heads (worked by animatronics). Koopa produces Goombas by “de-evolution,” using his transforming machine on people he dislikes. You’ll recall that Toad in the video games is a good-natured little man in a mushroom cap. In the movie, Toad is conceived as a plucky minstrel living in Dinohattan; when he speaks out against Koopa’s oppression, he is “de-evolved” into a Goomba with leering upturned lips and sharp teeth and a too-too-round dinosaur head. It’s truly the stuff of nightmares. At least Yoshi is still a dinosaur, albeit one that looks like a baby T-Rex and eats people.

Someone also thought it was a good idea to riff on the mushrooms of the Mushroom Kingdom by having the king of the land de-evolved by Koopa into fungus. Much of Dinohattan is covered in this fungus, and only Koopa knows why it has spread across the city. Luigi intuits a hidden consciousness guiding the fungus. Visually, the fungus is disgusting, portrayed as hanging threads of what looks like stretched chicken skin. I guess they didn’t want the fungus to look like just mushrooms? In any case, the fate of the Mushroom King is truly repellent in terms of both conception and execution. I cannot believe someone thought this was a good idea. I cannot believe it looks so ugly.

The poor cast. Leguizamo and Hoskins look like they’re barely coping. Hoskins manages to generate a few hearty laughs with his growling voice, but Leguizamo seems like some poor plumber apprentice kidnapped and held at gunpoint on set. Some of the dialogue and delivery are awful, especially Luigi and Daisy’s stilted, random moments of romance. Hopper is completely on a different planet. I don’t mean he’s playing an evolved dinosaur villain in a business suit from another dimension. I don’t even mean it’s just a bad performance. I mean that I don't know what he is doing in this movie. Everything he says and does is uncanny.

I’ll admit that there’s likely a market here for a late-night laugh with friends. Certainly, the fact that this version of Mario is basically about reptoids trying to invade Brooklyn will have some appeal for select viewers. But please, don’t mistake your laughter for the recognition of some diamond in the rough. Super bad is still bad.

1 out of 10

Super Mario Bros. (1993, USA/UK)

Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel; written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté, and Ed Solomon, based on the Super Mario video games by Nintendo; starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Samantha Mathis, Fisher Stevens, Fiona Shaw, Richard Edson, and Lance Henriksen.

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