saturday double feature: the super mario bros. Movie and Dungeons & dragons: Honor among thieves

It seems inconceivable that it took until 2023 to get a proper Super Mario Bros. movie (please ignore the social media rabble-rousers trying to retcon the doomed 1993 live-action version as some sort of misunderstood classic) - and the film’s record-breaking box office numbers would appear to confirm the longstanding appetite for it. Those hoping for a dose of childhood nostalgia dipped in Pixar honey may be disappointed by how fundamentally basic the film is on a storytelling level. This is an animated feature of decidedly modest ambitions, emphatically geared towards children and unapologetic about its innocuous and comfortably commercial creative approach. You can grumble if you so choose, but kids will love it, so why be needlessly churlish?

Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are Italian-American brothers of indeterminate age trying to get their struggling plumbing business off the ground when they get sucked through a magical pipe in the Brooklyn sewers. Mario ends up in the Mushroom Kingdom, where he quickly aligns with Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) against Bowser (Jack Black), fire-breathing leader of the turtle-like Koopa race, who hopes to use his newly acquired “Super Star” to strong-arm Peach into marrying him (Luigi has also fallen less-than-fortuitously into his clutches). Mario and Peach head to the neighboring Jungle Kingdom to recruit the Kong army (with Mario forced to square off against Donkey Kong - voiced by Seth Rogen - in single combat), there’s a Mario Kart sequence, and suddenly we’ve reached the climax. The movie passes by in a pleasant, confectionary 85-minute blur.​

Chris Pratt’s casting was met with considerable online mockery, but much like the film itself, his performance proves wholly adequate (Black’s Bowser is the obvious vocal standout). Like most Illumination productions, the needle drops are sturdy but unimaginative (Take On Me; Thunderstruck), the pop culture references reliable yet shopworn (Kill Bill; The Matrix). Character conflict is kept to a minimum (Mario’s dad isn’t supportive enough - Donkey Kong can relate). The action is peppered with a steady barrage of jokes, gags, and Nintendo-related references (the Punch-Out Pizzeria is a standout). And while the script may be wafer-thin, the animation is eye-poppingly gorgeous - from the candy shop palette of the Mushroom Kingdom to the psychedelic expressway of Rainbow Road. That may not be enough to make Super Mario Bros. a great movie, but it should at least keep one’s facial muscles twitched firmly upwards for the duration.

At first glance, Dungeons & Dragons is the sort of movie that elicits an extremely tired sigh. It’s a recognizable but rather meaningless IP that can seemingly be slapped onto any vaguely medieval fantasy adventure in the desperate name of brand recognition (also, the less said about the 2000 version - with Jeremy Irons doing his “Can you believe I used to be an Oscar winner?” scenery chewing - the better). Suffice it to say, this felt very much like a needless attempt to service pseudo-demand for a pseudo-franchise.

And yet, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves proves as comfortably light-footed as a prancing troubadour, dexterously plucking at his lute strings. The plot hits the ground running as silver-tongued bard Edgin (Chris Pine) and his barbarian companion Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) bust out of prison and set off to find Edgin’s teenage daughter, who’s in the care of their former compatriot Forge (Hugh Grant) - now a wealthy lord in the realm of Neverwinter (any requisite exposition or backstory is cleverly folded into the tongue-in-cheek sequence in which Edgin pleads his case to the parole board). But when Forge betrays them (as characters played by Hugh Grant tend to do these days), Edgin and Holga plot to rob his vault as payback… recruiting the bumbling sorcerer Simon (Justice Smith), cynical druid Doric (Sophia Lillis), and the earnestly noble paladin Xenk (Rege-Jean Page). But it turns out there’s an evil sorceress who wants to, uh… do something, so —    ​

You know what? Forget the plot. Dungeons & Dragons is a movie fueled by its own cheeky lack of self-seriousness. It’s irreverent sense of fun isn’t necessarily surprising, given that the movie was entrusted - oddly, yet fittingly - to the Game Night team of Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley (the latter, of course, having played a D&D fanatic during his Freaks and Geeks days). As was the case with Guardians of the Galaxy, cast chemistry and team dynamics go a long way. It’s hard to believe it took this long for a film to fully harness Chris Pine’s rakish charm (it was at least partially baked into his iteration of Captain Kirk) - it’s a reminder that he’s a star who hasn’t quite been the star he probably should have been (if that makes sense). The story - particularly throughout the second act - feels like a lot of idle questing (in order to breach the vault, they first need to track down a legendary helm capable of neutralizing the enchantments, etc…)… but when the actors are so clearly enjoying themselves, why resist? The movie has the sort of puckish sparkle missing from most modern blockbusters. It was basically made for Saturday afternoon filmgoing.