A Movie Too Far Removed From Its Roots...

Mario Bros, Final Fantasy, and Tomb Raider have been but the only video games to receive movie counter-parts (not counting the Sonic Anime), and of the three this was the only one I enjoyed. Honestly, I thought it was an awesome movie but they shouldn't have pushed it that far away from the plot and original graphics. The style wasn't bad, no, but it just seemed rather sudden to see eight-foot tall dino-men called "Goombas" rather than the tiny mushroom critters that Yoshi originally could just swallow! It was an interesting twist and I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the jokes and gags which actually proved quite funny. The action was a little lame and so were certain scenes were graphical details weren't their sharpest. But hey, it's 10 years old! Cut some slack here...

Plot- Not the most original nor the most interesting. But there's one there nonetheless and at the absolute least, it made sense! (Sorry, Final Fantasy Movie-goers). Mario and Luigi get thrown through an dig for fossils and wind up in the alternate universe suposidly blown apart when a meteor struck the Earth. Now to believe this story, one would have to A) Believe that a meteorite took out the dinosaurs and B) have to believe in the theory of evolution. All-in-all the plot wasn't horrible, but they certainly could've done better!

Graphics- Anyone else notice that the old granny who fell over the railing magically turned into a doll when she hit the car? Of course! The graphics ARE bad compared to new movies but at that time they proved quite a show-stopper. It's useless for someone to say they sucked and compare it to a modern movie when a decade blocks off the two. At the time they were excellent-made graphics so I shall venture no further into them.

Sound/Music- Humorous little game bits show up here and there, primarilly backdrops with enemy names on them (Bullet Bill, Ostro, Thwomp...) but the sounds used from the game just sound hystarical when Mario and Luigi use the jump boots and you hear the fireball and jump noise from the 8-Bit Mario games! The music blends well for the time this movie was made, but I doubt anyone born in the last 5 years knows what "Walk the dinosaur" even means. The voices used for Goombas and Yoshi were wonderful and blended well with the darker backgrounds. Overall the sound is good.

Action- Meh. I've seen better but needless to say I've seen worse. Some of the fight scenes look rather odd because the characters often duck away from the camera behind the person they're hitting, so very little contact is actually seen to be made. They do this rather well by the way, so it doesn't look too bad. Certain action scenes could have been done much better like the ice-sliding matress.

Characters- Mario and Luigi are protrayed well, both characters almost like you'd expect them to be, but rather than the coward Luigi we remember from the show, he proves braver than seen before. It's odd how the brothers met Princess Daisy before Peach Toadstool like the original story, but I don't know how it would've entered well, after all in this movie Mario is seen to have a real-world honey! King Koopa is evil, vile and commanding like one should expect and Daisy provides the stereotypical weak helpless generic video game babe ripe for the saving. Good, but not wonderful.

Overview- Comical, realitivly fast-paced, and a family-oriented flick, it wasn't bad. But hardcore fans of the game series might be left disappointed from the lack of game environments. If a sequel (or a whole new movie altogether) were to be made, I'm sure Nintendo and Shigsy would be more cautious about this. It wasn't a bad movie, go ahead and rent it out.