A super-flop that deserved to do better!

I remember way back when they first announced that they were making a film based on the Mario Brothers game series! I was extremely excited. Well they gave a basic frame of time as to when the film would come out. Well that frame of time came, and went, still no Mario film.

Well I ended up forgetting about the film. Them my mother, step-dad, and me were seeing a movie at a theater, I believe the film was Bethoven. Anyways, I finally saw the preview for the movie! I saw a few scenes from the film, and they mentioned Mario and Luigi. At that point of the preview I thought the names were just a coincidence. When they mentioned Koopa, and showed Dennis Hopper, I didn’t know what to think. I was thinking “this is nothing like the games”, yet I was still looking forward to seeing it.

Well, the big day finally came. It was in late May (I think it was around the 28th) of the year 1993, if I remember correctly. We went to theater to see this movie that I had been waiting for a long time to see.

Well as soon as we entered, I knew the movie would be a flop for the studio that made it. There were about 2 other groups of people there other than us.

What this movie is about is well, the Mario Brothers, sort of.

The film starts off by explaining how the Earth was once home to gigantic dinosaurs, and then a meteorite hit. It then explains that the dinosaurs were not all destroyed, but rather instead of destroying the planet, the huge power from the meteorite split Earth into two parallel dimensions. In one dimension mammals thrived, and evolved into man. In the other dimension the cold-blooded dinosaurs thrived, and evolved into creatures that resemble man, but are cold blooded.

The movie really starts off when you see a woman running around downtown Brooklyn, she runs up to the steps of a church, leaves a package, and also puts a small rock with that package. She knocks on the door a few times, and runs off. They then show her running down a section of sewers with a nervous look on her face. She is rounding a corner when all of a sudden someone grabs her and asks her “where’s the rock; she knocks a few boards that is holding up the section of tunnel her assaulter (who is Koopa by the way) and she is buried.

Well the church ladies sure do get a shock. They take in the basket that was left on the porch, and open it to find the rock, and an egg. To their amazement, the egg hatches to what looks like a normal human baby, they are all stunned.

Flash forward a few decades and we have the Mario Brothers struggling to survive financially. Luigi is reading a tabloid newspaper about some girls in the city that have come up missing.

They go out to a call that someone makes to fix a leak. They get beaten to the punch by a company named Scapelli.

At about this point in the film the plot starts to form. What is happening is that Koopa is kidnapping women hopping to find “the rock”, but he also needs the princess that was born with the rock, as she is the only person who can survive using it.

Use it? What do I mean by that you ask. Well, when that meteorite hit the Earth, the meteorite almost became like a “key” to merging our two dimensions. Also just near the meteorite is a small gateway that you can travel through to and fro between the two different dimensions.

As luck would have it, the “princess” happens to run into Mario and Luigi. She was using the phone asking someone to help increase security at the bone digging site she is working at. She needs security because Scapelli blasted at the site working on a construction site, and found dinosaur bones.

All this time two guns named Iggy and Spike who work for Koopa (and are also his cousins) are watching Daisy like a hawk. They are the ones who have actually been grabbing the Brooklyn girls.

Well Luigi goes over and talks to the women on the phone. They end up going out with Mario and his girlfriend to lunch. Later that night Daisy (the princess) and Luigi go the bone site, and Daisy shows Luigi an odd skeleton they found. It looked like a dinosaur skeleton, but had human like qualities. Little did Daisy know that the skeleton was actually her mothers. Well all of a sudden the whole site starts to flood, and two Scapelli workers are seen running off.

Well they run to get Mario to stop the flooding, and this is where they start their journey to “the other dimension”. Well lets me just say the other dimension is not a happy place, it is dark, dank, and depressing.

Basically the plot of this film is that they are trying to stop Koopa from merging the two dimensions, and rescue Daisy. They have to fight off the Goombas, which are like 10 feet tall. Any Mario fan knows that Gommbas are tiny little creatures, however the increase in size does not mean an increase in intelligent. In fact, they are rather stupid. The film actually explains how Gommbas came to be. What happened is Koopa figured out a way to de-evolve any creature into a more simpler creature. They actually show this in the film when Koopa de-evloves a street protestor named Toad.

Although while the plot does seem silly, it isn’t all that bad overall. The plot allows for nice special effects, good acting, and some very cool (and sometimes funny) action scenes.

The acting is great in this film, with one exception that is.

Mario’s part is played by Bob Hoskins. Bob did a great job of playing Mario, even better than Lou Albano did in The Super Mario Brother Super Show. He does a great job of making Mario out to be someone that is kind, friendly, but also someone you don’t want to push over the edge.

Lugi is played by John Leguizamo. He did a horrible job on his part. Luigi and Mario are supposed to be fairly close in age. It is easy to see that Mario is much more older, and wiser than his brother. Luigi seems young, punkish, and a little reckless.

Daisy was played by Samantha Mathis. She did a great job of playing someone who is energetic, but a little helpless. I liked her acting job in this film.

Then there is King Koopa. His part was played by Dennis Hopper. Although Koopa from the games was a huge, ugly, scary, lizard, they did do a decent job on him. He has the appearance of a normal person, but is far more aggressive. He is basically a communist, only far worse. He is pretty much crazy. Dennis Hopper did a darned fine job playing this explosive part.

The effects in this movie are awesome. I especially liked the scenes that involved de-evolution. These scenes were particularly awesome, as you see the victim’s whole body slowly change from skin-like to scale-like right before your eyes. Overall the effects are great!

The only thing that I have to warn you about (yes again) is that it is NOTHING like the game. There are a lot of references to the game other than the main characters name’s. For instance Thwomps (which in the game are basically huge blocks of cement that fall when you are under them) are special shoes that you put on, load with a special cartridge, click you heels together, and be sent into the air. Big Bertha (who is a giant fish in the game) is also here, she is this REALLY corpulent black women. There are other small references in this film, but you have to look closely to see them.

Overall I like this film, but hard core Mario fans may be (and I know a lot of them were) disgusted at how far off they ventured from the game and cartoon series.