Sometimes the brand overwhelms the story….if there even is one….

Super Mario Galaxy Movie works well enough as a piece of product placement and fan service for the video game series but if you go into it looking for an actual semblance of a film with a structure you’ll mostly be left wanting.

Having thwarted Bowser’s previous plot to marry Princess Peach, Mario and Luigi now face a fresh threat in Bowser Jr., who is determined to liberate his father from captivity and restore the family legacy. Alongside companions new and old, the brothers travel across the stars to stop the young heir’s crusade.

Honestly, they could have just called this “Super Mario 2” and likely no one would have cared.  It’s bright and colourful and will certainly send its target audience home happy but it’s as immediate extension of the first one as possible with little to no actual exposition or set up to tell and actual story, instead it’s just strings of dialogue that connect us to various set pieces throughout.

To put it plainly, movies aren’t supposed to have FOUR DIRECTORS…on a good day; two is pushing it but with Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Pierre Leduc and Fabien Polack all getting directorial credit, their collective inexperience is finally starting to show, proving that the genuine quality of the first film was something of a fluke.

It’s just not that good; it fairly lazily relies on the first film’s set up and establishment of the characters while taking us from scenario to scenario with no real character development.  It’s less concerned with actually making us care about Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach then it is about getting us to colourful action sequence after colourful action sequence.

While the love it’s made with is undeniable, it all leaves audiences who aren’t under 11 or hard core gamers making this all feel a little hollow because you just aren’t invested in anything on screen and are left wondering about the mildly racist nature of Mario and Luigi’s mediocre accidents.  It basically felt like no one actually cared.

No one is doing anything bad as the returning ensemble of Jack Black, Anya-Taylor Joy and Chris Pratt slide back into the fun and Brie Larson, Bennie Safdie, Donald Glover and Glen Powell all hop in for the fun, but it’s a vacation in a sound booth.  The voice talent is farming it in while wearing their sweats, I can blame em, but I don’t want to pay for it either.

If you’re the target demo of either a kid under 12 or a hard core gamer there’s more than enough in Super Mario Galaxy Movie to make you happy and kick up your feet to with a big bucket of popcorn because it’s very bright, filled with action and colourful characters.  However if you fall outside of the target demo (and have been roped into attending by anyone in the target demo) I’d advice to bring a book or even try to catch a nap, because Super Mario Galaxy Movie only brings fan service to the table, and even that feels like a chore ultimately making this 98 minutes of sizzle with no actual steak in site.  Or to put in video game parlance, this franchise is stuck on a level and can’t advance.