As a longtime Nintendo junkie I have to admit that the SUPER MARIO BROS. video game series is a legendary franchise. It was this platformer involving two plumbers rescuing a princess from an army of monstrous turtles (the Koopa Troopas) that single-handedly saved the video game market in 1985. The game proved popular enough to spawn multiple sequels and even a cartoon TV series (which, admittingly, is pretty dated and formulaic, but it did do a respectable job recreating the feel of the series). Given the successful reputation of SUPER MARIO BROS. as a game series, it doesn't seem surprising that a theatrical feature would be attempted. That film version premiered in the summer of 1993, and I was among those who were eager to see it.

Unfortunately, the movie turned out to be a major box office disaster and was trashed in almost every newspaper. As a matter of fact, it started the whole "videogames don't make good movies" craze. To be fair, one could argue that the filmmakers went about it the wrong way, or it might be that the source material didn't have a strong narrative. Either way, however, SUPER MARIO BROS. -- THE MOVIE deserves its status as a complete embarrassment to its namesake and an altogether bad movie, period.

This movie gets so many things wrong it's almost a miracle that I can write anything nice about it. With the exception of the characters' names and a few throwaway references, SUPER MARIO BROS., the movie has absolutely nothing in common with the video game series it's based on. The production completely eschews the lighthearted, colorful atmosphere of the Mushroom Kingdom and instead slaps on a dark, fungus-covered metropolis inhabited by dinosaurs evolved(!) into human beings. (One figures the scriptwriters mixed up SUPER MARIO WORLD--the only game in the series to set in a dinosaur-populated environment--as the ideal atmosphere for the MARIO franchise in general.) Instead of power-up mushrooms, fireflowers, and goombas, we get a human cast of villains acting (and looking) bizarre (even the chief villain, King Koopa is disturbingly portrayed as a human), raptors, exploding flameguns, and some totally ridiculous concept called "de-evolution." The nasty goombas are transformed from puny mushroom baddies into hulking lizards, and Yoshi, the beloved dinosaur sidekick of Mario, becomes a cuddly but woefully fake-looking baby T-Rex (and get this--he's Koopa's pet!). The whole atmosphere of this "Dinohatten" is too weird, chaotic, and cold to be engaging.

This may sound bad enough, but the movie's biggest mistake is its failure to provide anything in the way of a coherent (or compelling) narrative. The plot is a jumbled mishmash about meteorites, alternate universes, and fungus that spends too much time indulging in its own stupidity rather than offering some intelligence. The movie's action sequences should provide spark and energy, but here they come across as strangely pointless and uninvolving. Despite the clamor occurring in the scenes, the viewer feels a strange sense of detachment to the whole thing. This makes the movie as a whole a major chore to sit through, as if there aren't any duller moments to bore viewers to death (such as a slow, inactive sequence where Mario and Luigi escape from a goomba-infested elevator). Matters are not helped by the ridiculously cheesy special effects, which are so fake that they come across as laughable.

Even the aural aspects of the movie are displeasing; the soundtrack starts out promisingly with an electronic-sounding ditty of the classic MARIO BROS. theme, but aside from that, we got a fully-orchestral score (from Alan Silvestri) which is distressingly un-MARIO like. The same is true for the throwaway rock-and-roll songs, which were obviously slapped on for commercial reasons. The overabundance of screaming and overloud sound mixing is tempting enough to make one turn the volume down.

To its benefit, however, SUPER MARIO BROS. does support a high-quality cast--which is quite surprising given that this is hardly the kind of movie that demands one. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo work chemistry as the brothers, even if they are nothing like their video game counterparts, and Samantha Mathis holds her own ground as the pretty Princess Daisy. Dennis Hopper's portrayal of King Koopa, on the other hand, is disappointingly uncharismatic and spends more time chewing the scenery than creating a character worth rooting against; Fiona Shaw is more effective as his dastardly secretary. All seem to take on their jobs with a good-natured attitude and do what they can with the mumbo-jumbo material. Retrospectively, however, nearly everyone involved with the making of this movie do not look back upon it with such pleasant memories. Bob Hoskins has stated that he regretted doing the movie, as has John Leguizamo and even Dennis Hopper. And no wonder.

But even that isn't enough to qualify a good recommendation for SUPER MARIO BROS. as a movie. It's too unfaithful a recreation for MARIO fans, too noisy even for action-buffs, and too preposterous to reach a smart audience. The only "entertainment value" that comes from this movie is laughing at its own miserable failings. So if you want to sit through a convoluted, incomprehensible action-flick that blatantly disregards its source material, then this is the movie for you. Otherwise, SUPER MARIO BROS. is not an example of great film-making, much less adapting a video game into a movie. It is, simply put, a movie that ranks as so bad it's laughable.

Update: I found out recently that the reason why this film turned out the way it did is because of its rather messy production period, with directors and actors clashing on set, constant rewrites, and conflicting ideas on how the film should be. It really is no wonder, as the final result clearly shows.