Director Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton
Starring Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo & Dennis Hopper
Rated PG
Score 3.5/6

Two Brooklyn plumbers, Mario and Luigi, must travel to another dimension to rescue a princess from the evil dictator King Koopa and stop him from taking over the world.

Pausing for a moment, Super Mario Bros was supposedly the first Hollywood film directly based on a specific video game property. Now if it had performed well at the box office a “Metroid” film that was in development at the time, but never went past pre-production might have been made.
It took some effort to track down a copy of Super Mario Bros and I have been meaning to watch it for a while and I have only just got around to watching it, it should also be noted that the cast and crew supposedly did not have the best of times during production and there are various accounts that suggest Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo would get drunk to be able to get through the day. The link between the movie plot and the video game franchise is tenuous at best, if you think about it, you probably will need at least two movies to tell the entire story of one game. Super Mario Bros is still watchable even without the services of ‘Rent-a-Kid’. Now it has been more than a few years since I last played a Super Mario game, the movie seemed to have a darker tone then what I remember of the video game, though King Koopa’s plans of interdimensional conquest did make for a good evil guy plan. Some of the interactions early in the movie between Lugi and Daisy (John Leguizamo & Samantha Mathis) either come across as being cute or perhaps a little groanworthy. I enjoyed the performances of Fisher Stevens and Richard Edson as Iggy and Spike. Though the scene with the Goombas in the lift is probably one of the funnier scenes of the movie.