The sequel excited the audience, but left critics cold! 

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released three years ago on 5th Apr 2023, bagging over $1 bn worldwide. Now, Nintendo has given us its sequel, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (SMG). We have the Mario brothers, Bowser, and Princess Peach all back, with a blink-and-miss Donkey Kong, a few new ones; oh, and even Toad, how can we forget that jolly good mushroom from the Mushroom Kingdom?  The audience seemingly loved the movie, but the critics seem to be far less forgiving.

The first movie introduced us to a pair of plumber brothers who are thrust into a different dimension while “saving” Brooklyn from pipe-burst disaster, to end up fighting a tyrant, befriending a favorite character of every 80s player, Donkey Kong, and helping a princess save her kingdom.

Well, the sequel, SMG, from Illumination, takes us deeper into the Mario-verse, as the adventure is not grounded to Mushroom Kingdom alone, but the galaxy. It sure is nostalgic, but a bit shallow as it leans more on the fanbase by gifting them a few notable cameos.

From personal experience, everyone in the theater was laughing and seemed quite excited. It looked like many fans and non-fans enjoyed it. Now, speaking about critics, that’s a whole different story from my personal experience; critics don’t always rate great! (Audience and critics don’t always see eye to eye, critics have their metrics, and audience have their moments.)

Even asked two fellow viewers (strangers), and they loved it and had a good time, and even saw kids excited and cheering as the story advanced. 

We’ve played Super Mario games a lot, and now the movies, including the 1993 one, which was not that great; but this one, SMG, was really good (Albeit, some of us are not big Mario fans). 

The critics rated negative mainly for the shallow part of the story (not digging deeper into relationships {that’s just absurd, and foolish}), tone when compared with the first flick, excessive fan service, and cameos, using a good portion of the main fight sequence as a computer game (which can be annoying for non-fans who’re watching the flick for a movie), and the underuse of Princess Rosalina. Because of this, most critics felt it was more of a generic cash-grabber.

Anyway, Nintendo and Illumination seem to have a crowd-pleaser on their hands with this expensive tribute to the IP, and now, last heard, there is a plan at work for the third film’s potential 2029 release. 

^{Pic Credits: Nintendo/Illumination}