After plenty of teases, hype, and dedicated Nintendo Directs, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie finally made its debut yesterday. And so far, reactions have been… mixed.
You see, despite critics branding it “flat empty nothingness” and even “tortuous”, the film has certainly made an impression on cinema goers, and just celebrated the best opening day so far this year.
In fact, it has actually broken the record for best ever April Wednesday, raking in a whopping $34m. To put that into perspective, it has bested The Super Mario Bros Movie, which brought in $31.7m on its opening back in 2023 (thanks, Deadline).
But, back to those reviews. Over on Metacritic, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie currently has a Metascore of 37, or Generally Unfavourable. “It’s now commonplace to compare programmatic stuff like this to AI, but this is almost a second evolutionary step downwards; it looks as if humans, using AI, have tried to copy something that was originally AI generated, creating a bland, simplistic template that can be sold in all global territories where it can be dubbed by local voice talent,” reads The Guardian’s one-star review. Variety, meanwhile, called the whole thing an “eager product-tie-in mess”.
It’s a different story when it comes to user reviews, though, which sit with a Metacritic score of 7.7, or Generally Favourable. “For fans, an absolute delight, the love for the Mario Games that are shown here is great!” reads one review on Metacritic. “It gets the job done with fun action, references, and humour,” adds another.
Either way, it seems likely that we will see a third animated Mario film arrive in a few years time, given what a commercial success The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has been.
We awarded The Super Mario Galaxy Movie two stars, with Christian Donlan calling it “quite bad, for quite interesting reasons”.
“This isn’t a Bowser movie, just as it isn’t really a Mario movie or a Luigi movie or a Rosalina movie or any of that jazz. There isn’t enough space and time for anything truly memorable to develop,” he wrote in Eurogamer’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie review.
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