The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Too Many Power-Ups, Not Enough Story

Despite starting with a promising run, Illumination has devolved into the kind of corporate factory that caters to the lowest common denominator of entertainment. While the first Despicable Me films were original and creative, parent company Universal leaned less on story and character and more on the breakout commercial potential of the Minions, spawning some of the most plotless and empty animated films in years. Their other franchises haven't fared much better: Sing uses hit songs as a thread to sell tickets with little else; The Secret Life of Pets is a watered-down imitation of Toy Story (1995) with a disturbing amount of violence for a family film; and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) seemed to be the pinnacle of corporate filmmaking. While that first film played it safe and was a billion-dollar hit, it was harmless enough. With the new sequel, however, Illumination has stooped to a new low.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) finds the protagonists of the previous film, plumbers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day), and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), searching across the galaxy for the kidnapped Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), the key to Peach's past and the mother of the stars. The culprit is Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who seeks to avenge and liberate his father, the villain of the previous film, Bowser (Jack Black), imprisoned in miniature by our heroes.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is helmed by no less than four directors: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Pierre Leduc, and Fabien Polack, all returning from the previous film. This alone confirms that the film isn't pursuing a single creative vision so much as checking boxes at the behest of corporate bosses. As such, it feels more like the ramp-up of a marketing campaign, with the story revolving around how many new characters it can cram into the runtime (new toys to sell), how many costume changes and power-ups our characters can undergo (collectible toy variants), and how many winking references to their own products it can make before my eyes roll out of my head (other characters wearing Mario pajamas, carrying Mario plushies, wearing Mario aprons, and so on).

The first film certainly had this kind of corporate catering, but its relatively pared-down story allowed the characters and plot to breathe slightly, letting a personality emerge, largely thanks to Jack Black's always-energetic voice performance. There was also an intriguing, if unrealized, potential in the story of brotherhood between Mario and Luigi that would fit perfectly in a family film. These bright spots are drowned out by the barrage of content, winks, characters, and settings that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie wants to introduce, leaving every character feeling more like a cameo than an inhabitant of a creative world. Even a surprising voice role from Glenn Powell is given a passing glance as the film rushes to the next piece of merchandise it wishes to sell you.

Throwing inordinate amounts of money at a film's creative elements won't always yield quality, but the same can't be said for the technical ones, which showcase Illumination as the only true rival to Disney and Pixar in terms of animation quality. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is vibrant with color and texture, enhancing the cartoony video game aesthetic of its characters while also showing off hair and water effects with genuine panache. The same must be said of the score by Brian Tyler, a winning blend of existing Mario themes given a cinematic twist, which enlivens nearly every scene.

Yet with such a shameless framing of the film as a "product" and "content," there is little that is genuinely enjoyable or entertaining here. It isn't that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is horrendous so much as simply forgettable from one scene to the next, playing it so safe that it risks nothing: no jokes, no twists, no deeper message. The result is a meal of empty calories that you'd rather your kids not feed on too much.

4.7/10