"Do you know what I love about mud? It's clean and it's dirty at the same time." - King Koopa
"Hand out the devolution guns! Prepare for destiny!... Where's my pizza?" - Koopa
"Oh, Daniella! I promised to take her to Wrestlemania." - Mario
OH MAN. WOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Look, I know a few weeks back, I watched MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, and proclaimed it was THE most godawful movie that had come out perhaps in my lifetime here on Earth. Well, I was SORELY mistaken. I'm not sure I can COUNT how many ridiculous things are totally and completely wrong with this flick. Let's just take the MOST obvious- Bob FUCKING Hoskins is ENGLISH! And John Leguizamo is COLUMBIAN!!! I know they're actors, but could we have at least gotten ITALIANS?? Or even Italian Americans?? I just don't understand it. I mean, really when it comes down to it, it had a pretty insane cast. DENNIS HOPPER as KING KOOPA???? No WAY! He fucking BLEW it! All of those dudes and a small cameo role by Lance Henrikson as the Mushroom King in SUPER MARIO BROS.!!!!
I wanted to leave the SPINAL TAP-esque two word review: Shit Sandwich. But that wouldn't even do it justice on how bad this is. I LOVE bad movies. But for some reason, the choices made on this flick look like they were made by someone who had NEVER even played the games once. So a long time ago a meteor hit the Earth and split it into two mirrored dimensions. All the dinosaurs went into one dimension and evolved, and we lived here and evolved up from apes and simians. Fast forward to the late 70s, and this chick is running through the rain and she leaves a baby with a crystal around its neck on some nun's doorstep. Then she climb into the sewer and dies in a time warp or something.
Fast forward to now, and we have two "down on their luck" plumbers in New York. As Luigi explains it, Mario adopted him when he was little, and their names are Mario Mario, and Luigi Mario. They keep getting their jobs snaked by this guy Scappelli. Luigi is fascinated with conspiracy shows and tabloid rags that talk about aliens and shit. They lose a job but Luigi scopes this chick who is protesting a Scappelli job that's digging near where her college is digging for rare dino bones. Luigi gets some balls together and asks her out. They double date with Mario and then they split off. She takes him to see the sight and they catch some Scappelli goons digging around and sabotaging her work. They run back to get Mario to rescue them. Mario comes and makes it happen for them and they go deep into the excavation work. Then they get knocked out by these 2 goons named Iggy and Spike (who are supposed to be Koopa's sons, but they call them "cousins"). The cousins kidnap Daisy. Ok, then Mario and Luigi wake up and here Daisy screaming from inside a wall. Luigi dives into it because the wall looks like you could dive into it like water. Then Mario basically is forced to follow even though he is reluctant.
When they get to the other dimension, they see all manner of weird shit. The streets are packed with people who are growling at them, and these huge dudes in red coats with small heads. I guess these are supposed to be the turtles? Even though they say "goomba" which is a different bad guy all together. These guys look like they were made from the movie. Mojo Nixon has a cameo as "Toad" (who is an extremely short mushroom guy in the games, but a giant rockabilly dude turned red coat small head in the flick. BOGUS). These guys are turned into their forms by being "devolved" by some Koopa's technology. That's the only cool part of the flick. The Devolution. Iggy and Spike take Daisy to Koopa who asks where's the crystal around her neck. They being idiots, lost it. Koopa needs it to merch both worlds so he can take over. Everything about his world has been built to promote him. He turned "Princess" Daisy's father into a fungus that grows all over their world and hands out Bob-ombs to people and tries to give them mushrooms. Mario got one AND HE DIDN'T EVEN EAT IT!!! Wouldn't it have made sense to make him grow giant in size like in the goddamn games??? Why the fuck would you leave that part out?!?! My little brother could have made this movie better and he's 10. He could've made it better when he was 7!!
Ok, so I'm not going to bother to tell you what happens, because it doesn't even fucking matter. Yoshi makes a cameo as his small little dino self. There is one more part that really bothers me. There was this chick hanging out with King Koopa. They never even really say what her name is. They tried to, but you couldn't make it out. And she was supposed to be in charge. She was like Koopa's right hand, and he left her in charge of Daisy and everything. Then she got fucked up or eaten or who cares, but really: WHO THE FUCK WAS SHE? They don't even list her in the cast on the wiki. But she had a significant part in the movie. She had a ton of speaking lines. Look- even if you told me her name, SHE WASN'T IN THE VIDEO GAMES. None of them. Not a one. Why would you just make up some no name character?? Why was this film even made? Also- the soundtrack? Divinyls, Roxette, and MEGADETH. But could you pick out their song? Nope. Should you watch this? That depends... Do I hate you? If yes, then yes. Are you my friend? If yes, then stay away. Stay very away. (I mean) very far away.
Koopa's girlfriend/secretary was named Lena and portrayed by Irish actress Fiona Shaw. Her name is stated very clearly several times in the film while her actress/character name is easily seen in the closing credits, IMDb and the Mario Wiki.
ReplyDeleteHer character is named for Lina, the daughter from the original Doki Doki Panic on which Super Mario Bros. 2 was based.