About three years ago I took the boys to see The Super Mario Bros Movie, and back in 2023 I wrote
A very pleasant movie, totally harmless and acceptable for the intended audience...Count this as a missed opportunity when there are truly rebellious and inventive toy adaptations out there like The Lego Movie. Even the Lego Ninjago Movie has more personality and flair than this. Sorry.
The same goes for this movie too. This sequel is chaotic and, what's the opposite of flow? Choppiness? For most of the movie we're tracking three plotlines, like this is the third Lord Of The Rings instead of a PG movie targeted at elementary school kids. Even the individual plots have no flow.
Mario and his pals end up planet-hopping repeatedly on their mission to save Princess Rosalina, and each planet feels like another story idea that they bolted together until the movie was feature-film length. For example, on one planet Mario and company encounter a sleeping Tyrannosaurus Rex - not a Nintendo game character, but a relatively photorealistic CGI T Rex. With a movie that's obliged to include as many extra characters as possible for fan service, why is a non-Nintendo monster in this movie? (The sole moment I laughed out loud is on this planet, when Baby Mario happily wanders into the gaping mouth of the sleeping dinosaur, giggling while the slavering maw of teeth closes behind him.) This led to a generic "heroes chased by dinosaur" scene that didn't even bother parodying Jurassic Park along the way....but they did borrow the T Rex roaring sound effect (presumably Universal owns the IP for that too). All this screen time for the T Rex...then he doesn't reappear at the climax of the movie to eat a bad guy? What was the point of introducing him if he's not coming back later?
I was happy to see that the princesses Peach and Rosalina are given some moments to fight for themselves instead of just being helpless. And I was relieved that, this time, we didn't have to sit through any of the "Mario and Luigi are actual plumbers with a family in New York City" origin story nonsense.
Like I said three years ago, the creative standards for leveraging kiddie IP into feature films are way higher than what Nintendo and Illumination have managed. The Lego Movie had zero pre-existing well-loved characters in it and they managed to create a smart and charming action movie with beloved characters out of it. Nintendo had a much richer catalog and have done much less with it. (Beacon Cinema Pittsfield, with Peter, while Henry went to see Project Hail Mary again with his friend James and his dad)