The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing animated film of 2023 at $1.36 billion worldwide, and it earned that number honestly. It is not a great film by any measure of ambition or craft. But it is an extraordinarily effective commercial product that does exactly what it says on the label: it takes the world and characters of Nintendo's best-selling video game franchise, renders them with Illumination's technical excellence, populates the story with fan-service references that reward decades of game-playing audiences, and delivers 92 minutes of cheerful, fast-paced, clean family entertainment.

Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) are Brooklyn plumbers who have recently started their own business, Mario Bros. Plumbing, against the considerable skepticism of their family, their peers, and the local plumbing establishment. They get their first job and it goes disastrously. They follow a suspicious pipe underground and are separated into different kingdoms. Luigi ends up in the Dark Lands, immediately captured by Bowser's forces. Mario lands in the Mushroom Kingdom, where Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) is preparing to fight Bowser's coming invasion.

Bowser (Jack Black) wants to marry Peach. She is not interested. He is building an alliance of kingdoms under threat and assembling the power to eliminate all opposition. His acquisition of a Super Star has given him the ability to destroy any kingdom that resists. Peach is building a counter-alliance with Donkey Kong's kingdom. Mario needs to find his brother, help stop Bowser, and prove to himself that the doubters were wrong.

None of this is complicated. The film knows it is not complicated and has no interest in pretending otherwise. Directors Horvath and Jelenic came from Teen Titans Go!, a show built on fast jokes, cultural references, and a deliberate refusal to take itself seriously. They apply that sensibility to the Mario universe with results that work better than they should. The pacing is relentless in a way that respects children's attention spans. The visual gags are layered: background details reward repeat viewings with game-reference easter eggs that casual viewers miss entirely. The Mario Kart sequence is the most technically impressive passage, a full-scale Rainbow Road race with a final turn into a highway that is legitimately exciting despite no real emotional stakes.

Jack Black's Bowser is the film's reason to exist. He plays the villain as a man completely convinced of his own romantic heroism. The villain love ballad, 'Peaches,' in which Bowser sings about Princess Peach while playing piano in his lava fortress, surrounded by Koopas holding lighters like a stadium rock concert, is the film's signature creative choice. It is also genuinely funny and weirdly catchy. Black brings real comedic energy to the role. He makes Bowser's obsession feel less threatening and more pathetic in the best possible way: this is a villain who is scary because he is powerful, not because he is smart.

Now for the ideological ledger, and this is where things get interesting for our audience.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of the cleanest major theatrical releases of 2023. There is essentially no progressive ideological content to report. Princess Peach has been slightly updated from the games: she is more capable and participatory in the action than the kidnap-victim version familiar from early Mario titles. But this modernization is extremely mild. She is competent rather than passive. She is not lecturing anyone about anything. She is not a feminist avatar. She trains Mario, fights alongside the heroes, and remains the object of Bowser's villainy. The update is tasteful and the character is likable without any agenda attached.

The family scenes set in Brooklyn are traditionally structured. Mario's father is present, opinionated, and honestly worried about his son's choices. The family dinner scene, where the family watches Mario and Luigi's embarrassing commercial failure on television, is played for comedy but the family is intact and engaged. Mario's motivation is proving himself to his family and to himself. This is a traditional story structure: the young man who has to earn respect through action.

The brotherly bond between Mario and Luigi is the emotional center, and the film handles it with real warmth. Mario spends the film determined to rescue Luigi not because Luigi is a plot device but because Luigi is his brother and Mario is not leaving without him. Charlie Day's Luigi, even in limited screen time, conveys a genuine sweetness that makes the rescue stakes feel real. When Mario and Luigi are finally reunited, the moment lands because the film has earned it.

Nintendo's creative involvement in the production is evident in the film's content cleanliness. Nintendo has always protected the Mario brand from political contamination: the franchise sells to every political demographic globally, and Nintendo's business interest is to keep it that way. The result is a film that plays like it was produced in an alternate universe where Hollywood did not spend the last fifteen years embedding progressive messaging into family entertainment. No lectures. No identity politics. No institutional villain. Just a man trying to save his brother, stop a monster, and prove the doubters wrong.

The film's weaknesses are real. Pratt's Mario is personality-free. The emotional stakes never reach genuine tension: you always know Mario will win because the film has no interest in making you doubt it. Luigi is criminally underused. The story is thin. But these are criticisms of commercial craftsmanship, not ideology.

For our audience, the relevant assessment is simple: this is a film you can take your children to without any concern whatsoever. It is cheerful, clean, funny, and built around brotherly love and family loyalty. The villain is genuinely villainous and gets defeated. The hero perseveres through failure. The family is intact. The values are traditional. The runtime is merciful.

RT Critics: 59%. RT Audience: 96%. IMDB: 7.1. Box Office: $1.36 billion worldwide. The audience score tells the real story. Critics found it shallow. Families found it delightful. The audience was right.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Mild Princess Modernization	2	Low	Low	1.4
TOTAL WOKE				1.4

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Brotherly Love as Central Value	4	High	High	5.04
Young Man Proving Himself Through Perseverance	4	High	High	5.04
Present and Opinionated Father	3	High	Low	1.05
Clear Good vs. Evil Structure	3	High	Moderate	2.1
Family Loyalty Over Personal Glory	2	High	Moderate	1.4
Good Defeats Evil Through Courage	2	High	Low	0.7
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				15.3

Score Margin: +14 TRAD