Film Review: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993, Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

Yoshi Eggs: 2.5 of 5?
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, MONA LISA, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT), John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET, CARLITO'S WAY, ENCANTO), Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET, WATERWORLD, EASY RIDER), Samantha Mathis (BROKEN ARROW, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, AMERICAN PSYCHO), Fiona Shaw (MY LEFT FOOT, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, the HARRY POTTER saga), Fisher Stevens (MY SCIENCE PROJECT, HACKERS, SHORT CIRCUIT), Richard Edson (DO THE RIGHT THING, STRANGE DAYS), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, HARD TARGET, NEAR DARK), Don Lake (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, POLICE ACADEMY, BEST IN SHOW), Francesca P. Roberts (HARD TO KILL, INSIDE MOVES). Music by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE AVENGERS, MAC AND ME). Cinematography by Dean Semler (THE ROAD WARRIOR, APOCALYPTO, COCKTAIL, XXX, YOUNG GUNS). Edited by Mark Goldblatt (TERMINATOR 2, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, HALLOWEEN II, PREDATOR 2, BAD BOYS 2, XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION).
Tag-line: "This ain't no game."
Best one-liner:  "Remember, trust the fungus!"

For this particular film––from the directors of MAX HEADROOM and many a "Rush" music video, and in which stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo allegedly drank themselves into a stupor between takes––I feel that my review is best delivered as a series of questions to which there are (likely?) no answers. As it were, a sober philosophical inquiry.

Why did they feel the need to invent an entirely new mythology for the Super Mario universe, one which involves a parallel dinosaur dimension caused by the extinction asteroid event and called "Dinohattan?"

Could there possibly be a more '90s tableau than a recumbent "Luigi" Leguizamo in acid-washed jeans, a sideways ballcap, a generic "flaming yin-yang" tee, and while playing with a Pin Art executive toy?

Is it now official canon that the Mario brothers are so called because their actual names are "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario?" Is it canon that they are half-brothers separated by twenty-two years of age? How did they manage to shoehorn in "Manhattan land developer villains" in a movie which takes place largely in the SF&F hellscape of "Dinohattan?"

Are all of the dinosaurs here because of Yoshi's popularity, or because of JURASSIC PARK's? How many dinosaur bones are under the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

How strange is it that the "portal to another dimension" plot feels nothing like the SUPER MARIO BROS. games, or even anything like the formative "magic gateway" genre classics (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, WIZARD OF OZ, THE LION, THE WITCH, et al.), but in fact most resembles the Cannon Films/Kathy Ireland classic ALIEN IN L.A.?

Is it wrong that I like the sprawling, chaotic, teenage mutant "Albert Pyun"-itude of it all, and way more than I should? 

Here's a question I can answer: is it because the production designer is the Oscar-nominated David L. Snyder, who worked on BLADE RUNNER, DEMOLITION MAN, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY? Yes, yes it is.

Is it wrong that it feels so strange to see Samantha Mathis (the egg-hatched-and-raised-by-nuns Princess Daisy, here) in an early '90s movie without Christian Slater?

Do you think Slater/Mathis were more of an early '90s Tracy/Hepburn, or more of a Bartel/Woronov?

Do the creators of "Dinohattan" regret including the now-chilling image of a crumbling World Trade Center?

(The movie was released fewer than three months after the 1993 WTC bombing. See also: DOWN/THE SHAFT.)

Did the producers realize that one of their trendiest resources was not, in fact, Was (Not Was)' "Everybody Walk the Dinosaur," but having Sonic Youth's Richard Edson and Naked Angels Theater Company co-founder Fisher Stevens as rando Dinohattan henchmen?

Is the greatest moment of Fisher Stevens' life when he said "Sayonara, dicknose!" in MY SCIENCE PROJECT or was it his Grand Skateboard Entrance in HACKERS?

Was it a mistake to reimagine King Koopa as a "germaphobe Frank Booth" with weird Maggie Simpson cornrows and a bitchin' snakeskin jacket?

In which of his '90s villains does Dennis Hopper channel BLUE VELVET the hardest? Is it his work in WATERWORLD, SPEED, CHASERS, RED ROCK WEST, or SUPER MARIO BROS.? (Eh, I actually think it's SPEED.)

Who is "Lena" meant to be in the wider SUPER MARIO mythos? Does it matter when it's essentially the great Fiona Shaw playing, um, a live-action Disney villain?

Is the Yoshi puppet actually.... really impressive? I swear, it's one of the better puppet/animatronics of the CGI era and pretty much equal to anything in JURASSIC PARK. How 'bout that?

Why does the film take such a hard turn into a Terry Gilliam-influenced Kafka nightmare, complete with Rube Goldberg torture devices and Soviet gulag ambience?

Is it a "fun" gag when the Mario Brothers are nearly executed at a Lavrentiy Beria-style tribunal which resembles Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808?"

Is John Leguizamo even acting at this point, or has he surrendered to the existential horror of appearing in this film?

Is a tableau such as this what the kiddies are hoping for in their SUPER MARIO popcorn fare, an extrajudicial political prison to contain their favorite 16-bit heroes?

I mean, this would be at home in an Andrzej Żuławski film, or maybe an early Lars Trier joint, but...

 

maybe they've stumbled onto something good here, with this conceit of the "De-evolution" chamber––can finally the disparate worlds of MAX HEADROOM and IN THE PENAL COLONY co-exist? Do you receive a similar religious epiphany when you Devolve as you do when your crimes are carved onto your flesh with Kafka's Machine?

What was the impetus behind reimagining the "goombas"––tiny villainous mushrooms, in the game––as BEETLEJUICE-shrunken-headed dinosaur monsters?

Can Dennis Hopper explain it to us? (The answer? "Partially.")

Should the entire movie instead have been refashioned to center on Francesca P. Roberts' character, "Bertha," who has rocket boots and the best fashion sense in the film (courtesy of THE MANDALORIAN and NEAR DARK's costume designer Joseph A. Porro)? (Undoubtedly, the answer to this one is, "yes.") 

Why does the sequence of the movie which seems most directly based on a video game––featuring Bob Hoskins dodging traffic––

 take its inspiration not from SUPER MARIO BROS., but from the arcade classic FROGGER?

Why does the final showdown with Dennis Hopper/King Koopa center entirely around gunplay, when guns and first-person-shooting are have never been associated with the sort of games released under the SUPER MARIO umbrella?

 

And are you going to tell me that, ackshually it's kosher because those are SNES "Super Scope" guns, which technically were a Nintendo product compatible with exactly one game in the SUPER MARIO-verse, the mostly forgotten YOSHI'S SAFARI (1993), which, again, represents only one of forty-nine (!) MARIO-adjacent titles and is only representative of the series at large if you are a big ol' nerdy nerd?

So why does Lance muthafuckin' Henriksen play King Reznor, who, now that Dennis Hopper has been defeated, is no longer a giant fungus installation piece, and... er... who is King Reznor anyway? Trent's dad?

Is a fitting finale to have Lance Henriksen sit up in a golden throne and exclaim, "I'm back!––I love those plumbers!"

Perhaps it is.  

Then there is a post-credits scene which tries to imagine that this film is simply the ur-text from which Japanese game developers adapted the games. Okay!

What's the worst thing Bob Hoskins ever did? Wait... I'm being told we have an answer for this one!

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

–Bob Hoskins, as told to The Guardian in 2007

Well, there ya have it folks. SUPER MARIO BROS. 

To quote this film's version of "May the Force Be With You," I'll leave you with this benediction: "Trust the Fungus."

Film Review: PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990, Allan Moyle)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 102 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Scott Paulin, Ahmet Zappa, Seth Green, director Allan Moyle (TIMES SQUARE, XCHANGE).
Tag-lines: "Steal the Air."
Best one-liner: "Rise up in the cafeteria and stab them with your plastic forks."

"All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression." Those words were said by Yukio Mishima. And PUMP UP THE VOLUME is kind of like teen-movie Mishima. And that is awesome. This film completely embodies what I frequently refer to as 'the Slater factor.'

Samantha Mathis pines for more Slater Factor.

Slater is completely unhinged as his radio persona 'Happy Hard-on Harry,' but meek and afraid as his high-school geek persona, Mark Hunter.

Nerdy Slater undercover.

Radio Slater doesn't give a fuck.

And the film becomes about the blurring of these two personas and the line between thought and action. With a Fascist school and crypto-Nazi F.C.C. agents milling about, Slater has weight behind it when he says "it seems everywhere I look, someone's getting butt-surfed by the system."


Slater realizes The Slater Factor has spiraled out of control.

Slater delivers insane monologues, lectures lizards, humps empty wedding dresses, jerks off on the air, dances with a golf club, quaffs Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi, and says things like "Remember, my dear, I can smell a lie like a fart in a car" and "All the great themes have been used up, turned into theme parks."


Is this movie ridiculous? Certainly, yes. Is it corny? Yeah, that too. But there's something about its presentation of these themes of thought vs. action- which intellectuals have wrestled with since the dawn of knowledge- that shines true. Even kiddie-level Mishima is gonna hit close to home. Sometimes we need the pop culture version of our favorite intellectuals, and I'm glad that this film is out there. I hope that others continue to take up the mantle of riling up the youth. Talk hard. Five stars.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: BROKEN ARROW (1996, John Woo)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 108 minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew: John Travolta, Christian Slater, Delroy Lindo, Samantha Mathis, Frank Whaley (of PULP FICTION and GLAM), Howie Long (of those delightful ads with Teri Hatcher), Hans Zimmer (whose soundtrack for this flick is vaguely ripped off by Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR soundtrack), Graham Yost (writer of SPEED whose career was later derailed by SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL and co-writing the brilliant MISSION TO MARS), Peter Levy (the fine cinematographer from PREDATOR 2 and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5), Mark Riccardi (Travolta's 90's & 00's stunt double on everything from GET SHORTY to BATTLEFIELD EARTH), plus we even got the Dad from THAT 70'S SHOW and RAMBO III (Kurtwood Smith).

Tag-line: "PREPARE...TO GO...BALLISTIC."
Best one-liner(s): "Alright, you're bleeding, aren't ya? Well, that's good. Let's see if we can get any more out of you."

"You're out of your mind." "Yeah...ain't it cool?" Damn. Look at that poster. Slater wants to be in the limelight, but Travolta is having none of it. This is causing Slater to slightly raise his right eyebrow. More on that later. John Woo comes stateside for the second time, the first being HARD TARGET with Van Damme. Let's look at the Woo hallmarks: Slow motion? Check. Hero firing two guns at once and sliding downward? Check. Gun slowly being loaded in closeup? Check. Hero seeing the reflection of the baddie aiming a gun at him? Check. Two well-developed characters clashing with great determination? Check. Mexican standoff? Check. The Slater factor? Check. Wait, WHUTTT?!

You can't believe your ears? The SLATER FACTOR. Yeah, that's right. The Slater factor is very high here. The eyebrows and smarmy Nicholson voice are in full force. But what comes out of left field is Travolta stealing a great deal of the limelight from the Slater factor.

He's developed one of the most bizarrely gleeful, subtly feminized, and totally whacky antagonists to ever appear in one of these types of films. The man is having so much fun playing a villain and finally getting to sling about malevolent one-liners that you can't help but smile every moment he's on screen.


In fact, either Travolta or Slater are on screen for almost every frame of the entire movie, so the odds are the viewer will be beside themselves with youthful giddiness for the duration. Throw in a brilliant Hans Zimmer soundtrack, chemistry with ex-Slater PUMP UP THE VOLUME-era squeeze Samantha Mathis (Mathis later said that being romantic with Slater in this film was "like kissing your brother"), beautiful Southwestern landscapes, and the under-appreciated Delroy Lindo, and you've got yourself a splendid little way to spend the afternoon.

-Sean Gill