Super Mario Bros (1993) - Page 2

I talked my mother into buying me this.....
How I feel so dirty now..

Saw it in the theater, and own the dvd. It's great for a laugh in all it's cheesy badness.

I was in Hot Topic earlier today(looking for laces for my Docs, go fuck yourself), and noticed they had like 5 copies of this in their teeny DVD section. Is this movie "cool" with teens nowadays or something? Seemed weird.

I've never watched the entire thing, so that's pretty much all I've got. Looked like shit though.

Probably some pop culture thing with Mario Bros. and this is about Mario so...

I highly doubt that any teen that really shops at Hot Topic would admit to being a fan of the movie. Nostalgia shouldn't kick in for it just yet.

Yeah, but what about this?

That movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Even now, those designs are fucking freaky looking.

Youtube is in no way representative of reality.

I've also never seen the Garbage Pail Kids movie.

Not even a Rainbow Brite movie?

It's all about the Strawberry Shortcake.

I think the film's existance has been justified by that picture and a quote from Blue Velvet.

Links:
X-entertainment's take. Great for humor and nostalgia.
Destructiod's take. Great because they seem to be trying to find redeeming things about the movie. One of those things is that Mario does actual plumbing.
Devo-chamber

This movie is bizarre enough to watch drunk. However, it's not worth spending more than $5 on the DVD. And I love how that Roxette song has nothing to do with the movie, but the video paints it as some great fantasy masterpiece.

Also,
Damn you for bringing up a movie that terrified me as a kid. That trailer plays more like a bad horror movie than children's entertainment.

Super Mario Bros was one of the first movies I can ever remember hating. It didn't take too much to please me as kid (two of my favorite movies in the 80s were Howard the Duck and Masters of the Universe), but this was just shit.

I had a friend who liked it, so I remember watching it a few other times over the years. Strangely, it always seems to pop up on TV every few years. Normally, it seems to be on at three in the morning, so I'm guessing schedulers are trying to market this movie to the pot-smoking demographic.

I still can't believe this movie ever got made. At least, it's a shitty film with inspired casting and some strange scenes to wrap your brain around. What does Epic Movie have that can compete with those traits?

I saw it in theaters... and the 1st time I read your post, I thought it said "Wayans" which seems more accurate.
Yeah , they were like amusement park suits with sock puppet heads... and even the action figure was better proportioned:
I weep for Anthony Newley. The man responsible for the music to WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY deserved better.

I was Nintendo/Mario crazy enough to like this when I was a kid.

And now I can appreciate it for the fact that something so weird ever got made.

"Monkeys! Ha! Hahahaahahahah!"

I still have my John Leguizamo Luigi action figure. Some random person gave it to me for my birthday years and years ago. Never had a chance to open it. It got stuffed in a box during a move. My parents found it cleaning out the garage a couple years ago.

Had it signed by John when I went to see his Sexaholics standup show at the Orpheum in San Francisco. There was a joke where he said something like, "...when I was doing this movie that should have been straight to video. Or to the garbage." He saw it and laughed and said that this was the movie he was talking about.

I'm pretty sure I have the only "Mint on card" Luigi action figure signed by John Leguizamo himself.

I'm proud of that fact . . . I think . . .

I love this movie. What were they thinking?

It's also not as traditionally bad as many awful movies: the acting is fine, the direction is competent, the story makes technical sense (if not creative sense).

And they're lizards not mushrooms in the movie. What the fuck!

I kind of like the Roxette song.

The only thing i remember from the film is the above mentioned Elevator scene.

I saw this at the theater as a kid. The frightening thing is, I think the theater is the one that was later turned into Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek... where I work... oh fuck.

I got a soft spot for this flick this, Mortal Kombat and Jean Claude Street Fighter. Mindless fun you could turn you brain off too and watch as Hollywood tried to make stories out of storyless games. Also Mario Mario is just wrong and right at the same time, would have been funnier if he had a name like Betty or Sue and just went by the last name to avoid standing out or ridicule. Imagine a short, fat, mustachioed Brooklyn dude with a jones for shrooms, flowers and stars named Betty Mario comes to your door and asking to fix your plumbing. I don't know whether to laugh, be frightened or just say no.

I just wanted to point out that earlier in this thread felix natalya lamented that it's already been five years since he last read the junior novelization. Five. Years.

I have nothing against Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo in this film, but this could've been a hilarious Jim Henson acid trip film to smoke weed to if it were really like the game.

They had real Goombas in MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD. They had these cute little smiley faces that turned into lots of teeth.

Has anybody seen the trailer to PAC MAN: THE MOVIE?

If we're gonna talk about this piece of shit we might as long bring in something worthwhile.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/pixel...io-bros,29032/

Wasn't really sure where to put this...

 

 

I found a super-extensive website dedicated to the film. I haven't fully gone through it, but I found an AMAZING interview with character actor Richard Edson, where he talks about how bad it was on the set, how the directors had no idea what they were doing, and how the whole cast pretty much improvised the movie. Included in this gem-filled account is a story of Dennis Hopper going typically insane.

 

http://www.smbmovie.com/SMBArchive/specials/interviews/11_RichardEdson_10-31-10.html

 

The people who run this site clearly have an impeccable memory of the movie, and poor Edson can barely recall a thing about the plot.

Bob Hoskins does an interview with The Guardian
 

Also:

 

Quote:

 

Once upon a time, me and my fellow little innocuous children caught wind that Disney was making a movie based off "Super Mario Brothers". We reacted just like Bart and Milhouse when they learned there was an upcoming Radioactive Man movie. A Disney animated film about an unlikely hero out to save a princess?  Seemed absolutely perfect.

So that's why, to this day, when you watch "Super Mario Bros. the Movie", you can still almost hear a million little kid voices crying out, "What the f*** is this?!"
 

True that.  It's in good/bad company with "The Room" and "Howard the Duck" as a fascinatingly bad movie.  I've always said that I would give anything within reason to know what causes a person to play "Super Mario Bros." and come up with... whatever the hell is going on in the movie.  Alternate universes?  Slime everywhere?  Dinosaur-people?  Nuns who don't flip out when a human baby hatches out of an egg?

Yeah, have to agree with Tragic and the rest of you who find this fascinatingly bad. Apparently the original screenplay (which was extensively rewritten) was much more faithful to the games, though I think that might've been equally trippy considering how bizarre the games can get.

 

But yeah, everyone in this movie just looks bewildered as to how they got here. Hopper manages to escape by hamming it up, and Lance Henriksen inexplicably appears as the rejuvenated Mushroom King. Sadly, none of the other actors manage to distinguish themselves much, though nobody's really bad. It's just that, say, you can totally tell that Hoskins would much rather be elsewhere, and as a result he pretty much just rehashes Eddie Valiant.

How in fuck can you be faithful to the MARIO games?

Well, it apparently took place in the Mushroom Kingdom, had warp pipes, etc. I think it would've been pretty crazy.

 

I've been thinking it could work as a fantasy film in the vein of "The Princess Bride" or "Labyrinth", but the big question is, what would the point be? In a video game, you go through every level with the goal of rescuing the princess, only to end up in a castle where you defeat King Koopa (or some other boss) and she's not there. Then you do the same thing repeatedly until you finally defeat the final boss and she IS in the castle.

 

Obviously that couldn't be a movie. It would be the same thing over and over again. The other problem is the characters are paper thin. What distinguishing traits do they have? Mario doesn't speak in the first few games, then when he finally does, he's basically an Italian stereotype. I am at a loss as to how I could describe Luigi or Toad in terms of personality. Wario (if they included him) at least has a strong (albeit clichéd) personality as a vile, greedy egomaniac. That reminds me...there certainly isn't a lack of potential source material. The characters of the Mario universe have almost as much history as comic book characters when you consider how many systems have featured Mario games and how many games were on each.

 

The tricky part for the writers would be coming up with some kind of theme, message, or meaningful purpose for the movie. Setting that aside, though, the world of the Super Mario games could make a tremendous cinematic world, what with the wondrous caves, majestic mountains, and underwater worlds to name just a few of the possible settings from the games. Done right, the movie would undoubtedly be a triumph of production design and special effects. As daunting as it would be to create such an immense world, the greater challenge would be figuring out how to imbue the characters with any depth and give Mario and Luigi's quest any resonance.

Edited by Naisu Baddi - 6/28/11 at 12:33pm