The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a mishmash of references and jokes that aims to grab Mario fans’ attention and do virtually nothing else.

When they hear the news that Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson, of The Marvels) has been captured by Bowser Jr (Benny Safdie, of Oppenheimer), the son of the king koopa Bowser (Jack Black, of Anaconda), they set off on an adventure through space spanning multiple planets in order to rescue her. Newcomer Yoshi (Donald Glover, of Mufasa: The Lion King) also tags along.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is yet another demonstration of the critical divide between reviewers and general audiences, as the former has been highly negative while the latter was incredibly positive. Fans have been quick to jump to this movie’s (and the previous one’s) defense. “Oh, typical of critics to hate fun! They’re whining that the Mario movie doesn’t have a complex plot or characters when that’s not what the games are about!”

I do concede Mario games are not mainly about the plot or characters. However, that only applies to Mario games. When you’re adapting a video game into a film, you must understand that the two have very different methods of entertaining people. Games are interactive; even when a game has virtually no plot, the player can still find enjoyment from the gameplay, and how the game responds to their interactions. A movie, on the other hand, is purely one-sided. It delivers a story through purely visual and auditory means with no input from the audience.

Thus, a film needs a plot. No matter what kind of fun looking levels appear in the movie, if I cannot “play” the movie like I would a game, I cannot get the same level of enjoyment I would playing Super Mario Galaxy. That is the first major issue with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: it merely copies the Mario games onto the screen, but doesn’t take the care to adapt them into an actual story. Locations or characters are just there, not because the film establishes the world further, but simply because they are from the games.

And now to address the other part of the common defense for this movie: the idea that critics should not expect complexity from its plot or characters because this is a kids’ movie about Mario, not Citizen Kane. Firstly, I see absolutely no reason why animated children’s movies cannot be challenging or creative or layered. In fact, the best regarded ones are the ones that realize kids are capable of deeper thought too.

But secondly, when I say that a movie needs a story, I am not talking about anything incredibly deep. All I am asking for is for the plot to have proper pacing, buildup and payoff, believable character interactions, and characters that have arcs or at least feel emotionally driven. You can be as simple with those basic plot elements, but as long as they exist, I can still say that a movie has a story. It’s why I give Liam Neeson or Jason Statham typecast movies a pass as guilty pleasures, because while the plots are very barebones, they at least have an emotional drive and a sense of proper progression.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has none. Mario is never driven by any goal that feels personal, and doesn’t even have the simplest of an arc. Peach and Bowser appear to get arcs, but they’re either hardly focused on or not given the proper pacing for the audience to sympathize with the character. Yoshi and Rosalina, despite being newcomers, get no meaningful, character-driven interactions with the established cast. There’s no sense of stakes throughout the movie except when the film has to go to a climax. 

That is because The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is not interested in having a story. Its main goal is to be the “Look! It’s that thing from the games!” experience. The movie piles on reference after reference after reference to keep dopamine receptors flowing, and will be followed by five hundred “Top 10 things you missed in the Mario Movie” videos on Youtube. And while a few winks at fans are harmless, when the entire runtime is nothing more, the whole experience amounts to big budget brainrot.

It’s the job of a good, or even just competent, movie to make me feel like the experience was worth being commercialized, that it was worth making this story into a movie. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was not worth the full ticket price. If you are a Mario fan, I can’t stop you from enjoying this film. But I want to leave you with a question. Do fans not deserve more than just a 99-minute advert?

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was released globally in theatres on April 1, 2026. The digital release hasn’t been announced yet, but it’s likely to be May 2026. Read our review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)!