Long before this year’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” there was “Super Mario Bros.,” a 1993 attempt to bring Nintendo’s video game plumbers to the big screen. Starting Sept. 15, the film is back in theaters in Japan in limited release with a new 4K remaster. The occasion is ostensibly the film’s 30th anniversary, but the move is also surely intended to piggyback on the giant box-office success of the new computer-animated “Mario” film.
“Super Mario Bros.” was anything but a success. The film bombed and was pilloried by critics. Variety called it “tedious in the extreme.” The Baltimore Sun said it was an “uninvolving mess.” It currently sits at 29% on film review site Rotten Tomatoes.
The thing is, they were all wrong. This movie rules.