MOVIE REVIEW – Super Mario Galaxy: The Movie has no interest in easing you in. It blasts out of the gate, cranks the nostalgia way up, and throws a full-on Nintendo spectacle at the screen with so much speed and color that it barely stops to catch its breath. That is part of what makes it so much fun, and also part of what holds it back. At its best, it is exciting, funny, and genuinely charming. At its messiest, it feels like a fan-service roller coaster moving so fast it sometimes forgets to properly connect one big moment to the next.

In 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie did more than make over $1.3 billion worldwide. It also proved there was real life in a larger Mario movie universe. The first film was not perfect, but it was energetic, warm, and clearly made by people who understood why these characters mattered in the first place. That respect for the games went a long way, and it helped turn the movie into one of the better video game adaptations we have gotten. Super Mario Galaxy: The Movie builds on that success, but it does so by moving even faster. It wastes no time getting started and almost immediately starts firing off action scenes, jokes, Easter eggs, and surprise character appearances. The trade-off is that the story sometimes struggles to hold everything together.

No setup this time, just go

Where The Super Mario Bros. Movie spent a good chunk of its runtime turning Mario from a struggling Brooklyn plumber into a hero, this sequel does not need to do any of that groundwork. After a quick opening that introduces Rosalina and points the story in its general direction, the movie floors it and rarely lets up. That makes the pacing feel exciting for a while, but it can also be exhausting. The film moves so quickly that it sometimes feels like it is daring you to keep up. Once it reunites Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, and Bowser, and brings in new faces like Bowser Jr. and Yoshi, it launches into a huge cross-section of Mario history without looking back.

The movie pulls in material from Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Odyssey, and even gives a surprisingly noticeable stretch to Super Mario Bros. 2, also known as Super Mario USA. As someone who has loved Mario for more than 35 years, I had a great time spotting all of that. Even when the references come flying at the audience in rapid bursts, there is still a lot of joy in seeing just how much of the franchise the film tries to squeeze in. At the same time, not every callback really adds something meaningful to the story. Some are there because they are fun to see, and not much more than that.

The Galaxy influence carries the movie

Even with all the nods to other games, this is very clearly a Super Mario Galaxy movie. From the beautifully realized Comet Observatory to the new version of the Star Festival, now tied to Peach’s birthday, to the use of launch stars and the glimpses of familiar planets from Galaxy and Galaxy 2, the movie earns its title. The broader Mario franchise is all over the edges of the film, but the atmosphere, the world-building, and a lot of the visual and musical identity come straight from Galaxy.

The music is one of the clearest improvements over the first movie. One of the biggest complaints about The Super Mario Bros. Movie was how often it leaned on licensed songs when game music would have done the job better. This sequel mostly avoids that mistake. Outside of one brief moment where a licensed track fits naturally enough, the movie mostly trusts its own score. That gives Brian Tyler’s music, once again built with Koji Kondo’s influence in the mix, much more room to shine. There are several moments where small musical references and familiar sound cues from across Mario and Nintendo history land exactly the way they should. And because the Galaxy games already had such a big, cinematic orchestral sound, that music slips into blockbuster mode very easily.

Yoshi, despite being heavily featured in the marketing and positioned as an important part of the story, never feels especially well used. He shows up early, joins the group quickly, and then mostly moves along with the plot without being given much to do. Toad even makes a joke about how sudden that is, which feels like the movie quietly admitting the problem out loud. That gets to one of the film’s bigger weaknesses: there are plot beats, motivations, and major developments here, but a lot of the storytelling feels lightly stitched together just to move everyone from one location or action set piece to another.

Not every cameo earns its place

Fox McCloud falls into a similar category. He is fun to have around, and as a Star Fox fan, I absolutely had a moment of disbelief when the movie actually went there. But he also feels a little forced, as though the film wanted one more big crowd-pleasing surprise and shoved him in to make that happen. It does not help that the marketing spoiled his appearance before release, which turned what could have been a genuine shock into more of a waiting game. Still, Glen Powell does a very good job with the role, and the movie smartly leans into Fox as a cocky ace pilot rather than a stoic military leader. That gives the character a playful energy that fits this kind of movie well.

For all of its storytelling wobble, Super Mario Galaxy: The Movie is the kind of film that really lives on its individual moments. And on that level, Universal and Nintendo get a lot right. The visuals are often gorgeous, the animation is lively, and scene after scene carries the sense that the people behind it genuinely care about this world. This is obviously a family movie, and some of the humor is aimed very directly at kids, but it also knows exactly how to appeal to people who grew up with these games. The novelty of finally seeing Mario treated faithfully on the big screen may not hit as hard as it did the first time, but there is still something very easy to enjoy about watching these characters dive into another huge adventure.

A fun ride first, a great story second

Super Mario Galaxy: The Movie still has the bright, playful spirit that made the first movie work, and it continues to treat the source material with more care than most video game adaptations ever manage. But it also feels a lot like a theme-park ride. You strap in, it throws a lot at you, and by the time it ends, you are probably smiling even if the whole thing was a little uneven. That does not make it a great story, but it does make it effective entertainment.

This is probably not a movie people will point to as a storytelling triumph, but it is colorful, crowd-pleasing, and easy to enjoy. It does not always know how to organize all of its ideas, and the plot can feel more like a chain of leaps from one big moment to the next than a carefully built dramatic arc. Still, it has so much energy, affection, and visual imagination that it remains hard to resist. And honestly, for a big animated Mario sequel, that may be exactly enough.

-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”-