The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ~ Review

By: [email protected] on Mon, 04/06/2026 - 14:28

Imagine if you will that one early morning, you are rudely awakened by a very excited six-year-old bouncing off the walls. Before your bleary brain can process exactly what is happening, the kid launches into a long monologue describing his evening, which involved ingesting a metric ton of candy, playing every single Mario game while simultaneously watching Frozen and Star Wars.

The resulting narrative, spun out of this heady stew, is the experience of watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. A dizzying, mostly entertaining, frantic experience, where things like “themes,” “characters,” and “arcs” are gestured at but mostly forgotten in favor of the next frenzied set piece.

Picking up shortly after the events of the first movie, plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day) have settled into life in the Mushroom Kingdom, the fantastical world led by Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy). There, Mario and Luigi solve various problems, such as helping a dinosaur named Yoshi (Donald Glover) out of a pipe. Bowser (Jack Black), the fire-breathing turtle (and villain of both the first movie and most Mario games), is still shrunk down to the size of an action figure. Meanwhile, in space, Bowser’s son, Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), has captured Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), who takes care of the Lumas (a bunch of sentient stars). A luma escapes and enlists Princess Peach to help rescue Rosalina. So, Peach heads off, leaving Mario and Luigi in charge. However, when Bowser learns that his son is around, he wants to accompany Mario and Luigi to find him. And Fox McLoud (Glen Powell) from the Star Fox games shows up because they need a pilot.

There is a LOT going on in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. The film moves at a breakneck pace and has what feels like five different storylines jockeying for attention. It’s not a movie that flows from one scene to the next, but just smashes from one sequence to the next. There are themes here about reuniting families and doing the right thing, but they are more suggestions than part of the story.

That all being said, the movie is actually a lot of fun. It’s funny, and its breakneck frenzied pace never became exhausting for me. Directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic manage to keep the fun going, and the action sequences (which the film is mostly comprised of anyway) are staged with an inventiveness that feels like it came straight out of a Mario game. I wish the film displayed more of the anarchic spirit that Horvath and Jelenic bring to their series Teen Titans Go, but maybe Mario just isn’t the property for that type of irreverence.

Sometimes I want more out of a movie. A coherent story with themes, character arcs, set-ups, payoffs, or philosophical musings. And other times...I just want to see Mario and Peach work together to fight Bowser. After walking out of the movie, my six-year-old excitedly proclaimed it his favorite movie ever, and he can’t wait to see it again. Who can really argue with that kind of enthusiasm? Not me.

Three stars out of Four