Video Game Flicks: Super Mario Bros. (1993)

No, it definitely isn't.

My personal story with this thing is almost as weird as the movie itself. If you've read the many video game reviews I've done, you'd know that, when I was a young kid, I lived and breathed Nintendo, particularly the Mario and Donkey Kong franchises. Ergo, you would think I was one of the few people who saw this in the theater. But no; instead, I was one of the millions being thrilled by Jurassic Park during the summer of '93. In fact, I didn't even know this movie existed until I was almost in late elementary school. A big reason for that is I was only five when it was originally released and wasn't that cognizant of things that weren't forced right into my face, like Jurassic Park. I remember seeing commercials and previews for that all over the place but never once did I see any advertising for Super Mario Bros., be it the movie itself or the toy-line. Also, I don't think we had cable yet, and while the movie got plenty of coverage in Nintendo Power Magazine, I didn't become a subscriber until I was eight. The first time I ever laid eyes on it was when I was, I believe, nine, and my beloved Aunt Gwen, God rest her soul, bought me the VHS for Christmas. When I unwrapped that thing and looked at the artwork, as well as the back, I didn't know what to think. Again, I didn't even know there was a Mario Bros. movie, and the only Mario item I'd ever seen that wasn't one of the games was The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, which I watched a lot when I was really young and even owned some video tapes of. This, judging from the screenshots on the back, was something else entirely. Speaking of which, I didn't know what to make of those images. I saw a guy in a red suit and hat who was clearly meant to be Mario, but I saw others like some weird goons with big bodies and tiny heads, some guy in black with a weird haircut holding a big ray gun, and a girl fawning over a little dinosaur. Reading the synopsis, it mentioned Mario and Luigi, a "diabolical lizard king," whom I assumed was Bowser, and Goombas, but "Dinohattan," a place where people evolved from dinosaurs? Huh. I'm sure I thanked Aunt Gwen for it but I really didn't know how to feel about it. I can tell you one thing, though: I was in no hurry to actually watch it. I put it with my other videotapes and kind of forgot about it until many months later.

Then, one Saturday morning, I remember watching an episode of the Goosebumps-like kids horror show, Bone-Chillers, and after it was over, randomly deciding to go ahead and watch this Super Mario Bros. movie. And just when I thought my day couldn't get any weirder than watching a high school teacher turn into a frog-monster after eating some toxic eggs, I get this bizarre as hell movie that seemed like it was related to Mario Bros. but, at the same time, was not at all what I imagined. I got a random animated opening giving a kindergarten-level lesson on dinosaurs, an egg hatching to reveal a human baby, a guy who was supposedly Luigi but looked nothing like the game character, an ugly, fungus-covered dystopian city, a guy with a frilled haircut who was supposed to be Bowser or, rather, King Koopa, "Goombas" who were also nothing like the game characters, and so much gross stuff, from slimy fungus, particularly a pulsating, mucus-dripping mass that turned out to be the world's original king, and mud baths to drinks with worms in them and Koopa being reduced to green slime that poured all over a road. I really did not know what to think and, save for a couple of re-watches, including one time it aired on Disney Channel when I was in either middle or early high school, and a passing mention in Nintendo Power, I never thought about it much. It became one of those, "Was That Real?", cases. That was, until the internet came along, as well as movie review books, and I realized that, not only was it real, but I was far from the only one who was dumbfounded by it. Though I'd suspected as much, I learned just how badly it bombed when it was originally released and that many who saw it absolutely hated it, mostly because it didn't resemble the games. And, in later years, I learned about the movie's notoriously hellish production and how, to their dying days, Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper said it was one of the worst things they'd ever been involved with, while John Leguizamo talked about how he and Hoskins often got drunk just to get through the shooting.

And yet, I also learned that the movie had quite the cult following, which I was actually not that surprised about. It's so bizarre and outside the box that it was almost destined to develop one. Plus, when I thought about it, I understood the rationale that doing a faithful live-action adaptation of the games would be next to impossible, although I still thought, "But who thought this was the way to go?" I hadn't seen the movie in full since I first watched that videotape, and with a new Mario Bros. movie on the horizon, I thought it would be fun to take a look back, especially after having now heard some staunch defenses of it. I've now re-watched it twice in full and, while I don't hate it, I can't exactly say I'm a fan, either. That has nothing to do with its not being faithful to the games; rather, I find it to be awkward, not that funny, needlessly gross, and really overstaying its welcome. Even though it's not that long, by the time you get into the third act, I'm ready for it to end, and the movie itself feels like it's given up and isn't following its own rules anymore. There are a number of things I can praise, like the cast, the effects (particularly the practical creature work), and especially the production design, and I can respect the people behind it deciding to go with this very bizarre vision and, for the most part, sticking with it, but, man, this thing is freaking bizarre.

65 million years ago, a meteorite crashes into what is now Brooklyn, wiping out the dinosaurs... or so it seems. In 1973, on a dark, stormy night, a woman rushes through the Brooklyn streets and leaves a small container on the doorstep of a Catholic orphanage. When the nuns discover it and bring it inside, they open it to find a large egg, as well as a strange rock fragment. As the mother retreats down into the sewers, only to be confronted by a man named Koopa, who demands to know where the fragment is, the egg hatches a human baby. Twenty years later, down-on-their-luck plumbers Mario and Luigi are constantly beaten to jobs by the mafia-owned Scapelli Construction Company. Said company has recently unearthed dinosaur bones at a construction site under the Brooklyn Bridge and their work has been brought to a halt, as NYU students excavate the bones. Anthony Scapelli himself arrives at the site and threatens Daisy, the head of the excavation, to finish up soon or risk disappearing, as has already happened to several other women in the area. Daisy meets the Mario Brothers as they're fixing their van's damaged radiator and Luigi is immediately smitten with her. With his big brother's encouragement, he talks to her and invites her to have dinner with them that night. After dinner, Luigi and Daisy go off together to the excavation site, where Daisy shows Luigi some dinosaur fossils that are strangely human-like in structure. Scapelli's men sabotage the water pipes at the site and Luigi and Daisy get Mario's help in fixing them. Though they succeed, Iggy and Spike, two bumbling morons behind the recent kidnappings, abduct Daisy under Koopa's orders. Attempting to save her, the brothers find their way to Dinohattan, a city in an alternate dimension created by the meteorite impact, full of humanoids descended from the dinosaurs. Koopa, the tyrannical ruler, plans to use the rock that was left with Daisy, a fragment of the meteorite, to merge the dimensions and take over the human world. However, in the chaos, Mario and Luigi get a hold of the rock, then lose it themselves, making them targets for Koopa's forces. Now, they must both save Daisy and stop Koopa from succeeding in his plan for total domination.

Roland Joffe

For a while, I knew that the film's production was an absolute shit show, but what I really wanted to know was how this thing got off the ground and became that in the first place. It started with Roland Joffe who, at the time, was pretty successful, having twice been nominated for Best Director for his films, The Killing Fields and The Mission. He approached Nintendo of America president, Minoru Arakawa, with the idea of his production company, Lightmotive, producing a movie out of Super Mario Bros. After winning him over, he managed to get the rights to the characters from Japan president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, for just $2 million, while Nintendo got all the merchandising rights. It's been often reported that Nintendo was so sure that the Mario brand would succeed no matter what that they were very hands-off during the movie's production, which played a big part in what it became. The only input they really had was rejecting the casting of Dustin Hoffman as Mario. In any case, the whole thing appeared to start unraveling the minute Joffe got the rights and began developing the film. It's especially crazy how many script issues they had during both pre-production and actual shooting. They went through various scenarios, like a Rain Man-esque road movie focusing on Mario and Luigi's relationship, written by Rain Man screenwriter himself, Barry Morrow, a Wizard of Oz-like adventure that subverted and satirized various fairy tale tropes, and finally, the directors who were hired threw that out and hired two more screenwriters to come up with a dark, sci-fi take that used Ghostbusters as a model to balance out weirdness and comedy. But then, those screenwriters were dismissed, another pair was brought in to rewrite, but then, even though that draft got most of the cast to sign on, Joffe and his producing partner, Jake Eberts, decided the tone was slipping away from what would appeal to younger kids and hired yet another writer to fix it, without informing the directors. And those directors, in turn, brought back the pair of screenwriters they'd initially hired to deal with the conflict between the script's tone and their visual style with on-set rewrites, much to the frustration of the actors. Snake-bit doesn't even begin to describe this movie's production, and it hurt Joffe's career for many years.

As for possible directors, Joffe and Eberts approached people such as Greg Beeman, Harold Ramis, and even Danny DeVito, whom they hoped would also star as Mario, but none of them worked out for various reasons. In the end, they went with Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, mostly because they were the creators of Max Headroom, and despite the fact that they'd only directed one movie and were mainly known for television and commercial work. Even though they weren't all that familiar with the Mario games, the husband and wife directors agreed to do the movie because of the unique challenged it presented. They also hoped to accomplish what Tim Burton's Batman and the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie had, which was adapt something that was seen as light-hearted into something darker. But problems began when Joffe and Eberts hired Ed Solomon, who'd written the Bill & Ted movies, to tone down the dark script without the directors' knowledge. When they learned of this, Morton and Jankel almost quit, but decided to forge ahead, thinking they could reclaim their vision during shooting, which proved to be a huge mistake. Besides frustration with the constantly changing script, the cast and crew came to despise the directors themselves, as they were bad about giving conflicting directions and being very indecisive in general. They made decisions that would lead to more on-set script changes, offended cinematographer Dean Semler by giving him shot-lists which came with notes that came off as though they felt they knew better than him, and there's an oft talked about incident where Morton is said to have poured hot coffee on an extra's costume, which he has always denied. He's also said they were locked out of the editing room by the producers, and neither of them were allowed to oversee re-shoots. Not surprisingly, they went back to television and commercials and haven't made a movie since. They also divorced in 2005.

For as much as he may have hated being in this movie, Bob Hoskins is actually quite good as Mario. He's characterized as a bit short-tempered, especially when it comes to his and Luigi's biggest competitor, Scapelli, and his brother's interest in the paranormal and tabloids, but he has a big heart. When he sees Luigi's interest in Daisy, he encourages his bashful brother to talk to her, and when he gets tongue-tied while talking to her, Mario steps in and offers her a ride back to the excavation site. Moreover, he goads Luigi into inviting Daisy to dinner, where they double-date with him and his girlfriend, Daniella. He's even sympathetic to Daisy when she admits to being an orphan, and you learn both he and Luigi are orphans, with Mario having to be a parent as well as a brother. He and Daniella really encourage Luigi to spend more time with Daisy after dinner. I also like how, when Luigi and Daisy come to him when Scapelli's men sabotage the water pipes at the excavation site, Mario grabs his tool-belt without hesitation. Although plumbing has been mentioned in the games as being little more than Mario's occupation, in this movie, you see that he really knows his stuff, as he effortlessly fixes the busted water pipe, with Luigi's assistance. And he also has his heroic side, as when Iggy and Spike kidnap Daisy, he's just as determined to save her as Luigi. He even forgets that they just went through a weird portal in the rock-wall to tell Luigi, when he says he's going to kill Iggy and Spike, "No, you're not gonna kill 'em! Not if I get there first! I'm gonna break every bone in their body, and then, I'm gonna kill 'em! I'm really gonna kill 'em!" This extends to later, when Toad is arrested by the Dinohattan police for singing an anti-Koopa song, which Mario protests. He protests even more when he and Luigi are arrested for being plumbers. Speaking of which, they then have to deal with the fact that they're in this weird, nasty, dystopian city, full of criminals and foot soldier-like policemen. After learning where they are and meeting Koopa, they escape and end up in the expansive desert outside of the city. There, when they capture Iggy and Spike and learn Koopa's plan, both Mario and Luigi become determined to thwart it and save Daisy.

Not only is his performance great but Hoskins just looks the part. Aside from the baldness, he pretty much looks how I would envision a live-action version of Mario, especially when he and Luigi get their iconic suits. I also really like the voice. It may not be the stereotypical Italian voice we now associate with Mario but it works better in a live-action movie and it feels like how you'd expect an Italian-American living in Brooklyn would sound. Speaking of which, the fact that Hoskins was

actually British, with a thick Cockney accent, never ceases to amaze me. Between this and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he proved that he was virtually flawless in putting on this kind of accent. But what really makes him a great Mario is how, despite some doubts and reservations here and there, he never falters in his resolve to save the day. When he and Luigi enter Koopa's tower hideout, he gets the idea to seal up the valves on the heating system to freeze the place, aiding in their rescue attempt. Upon learning that Daniella was captured

by mistake, he goes out of his way to save her and the other kidnapped women. And the climax consists of him taking on Koopa himself, both in Dinohattan and briefly in the human world. By the end of the movie, when Koopa has been defeated and the former king is restored from the fungus, Daisy opts to stay behind to repair the damage Koopa did and get to know her father. When Luigi is reluctant to let her go, Mario tells him, "She's tryin' to tell you she can't leave her until she knows where she belongs. And if you'd loved her, you'd understand that." Finally, when she shows up three weeks later, asking them to help her with another crisis, Mario is ready and willing to help without even knowing what it is.

John Leguizamo's Luigi, on the other hand, I have more mixed feelings about. For one, while he's always been portrayed as Mario's younger brother, they've often clarified that the two of them are twins, with Mario just having to have been born first. Here, Luigi is not only clearly much younger than Mario, but he's portrayed as kind of like a big kid. He believes in paranormal stuff, often watching a television show based around it, and is more wide-eyed and hopeful, as opposed to his more cynical brother, whom he tells, "Anything's possible, Mario. You just gotta believe." I know I said my problems with the movie don't revolve around how it's not like the games but this isn't what comes to mind when I think of Luigi. Moreover, he has moments where he comes off as downright dumb, like when he asks Daisy, "Wow, there were dinosaurs in Brooklyn?", and, when he and Mario are listed as "aliens" by the Dinohattan authorities, he goes, "Aliens?! We gotta deal with aliens too?!" Mario then tells him that they're the aliens and he childishly goes, "We are? Wow, cool." That said, what they do get right is his bashfulness, as he's so nervous and tongue-tied when he first meets Daisy that he, unknowingly, loses him and Mario a big job when he offers her the payphone. What's more, he's falling over his words so much that Mario has to step in and break the ice for him, much to Luigi's chagrin, as he wishes he could make his way without his brother's help. But it works out, as he and Daisy prove to have a lot in common, so much so that she takes him to the excavation site beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to show him the dinosaur bones her team's uncovered. And when she's abducted by Iggy and Spike, Luigi doesn't hesitate to go after her, even when he and Mario come across the bizarre portal leading to Dinohattan. Speaking of which, Luigi is far more accepting of the stuff they come upon there than Mario. He's not annoyed by Toad's singing and believes in what he says about the two parallel dimensions and that the fungus coating the city is the devolved old king. And while Mario is just disgusted by the fungus, Luigi believes it's trying to give them weapons to use against Koopa and is also trying to communicate with them.

Despite my mixed feelings, I will admit that, like Bob Hoskins, Leguizamo does look good in the expected green overalls. And, like Mario, he's just as determined to both save Daisy and stop Koopa's plan, though he's still more willing to trust the fungus than Mario initially is. What I can't help but love is how, when Daisy introduces them to the blob of slimy fungus that her father has been turned into, Luigi is totally accepting of it, telling him it's an honor to meet him and thanking him for

his help, while Mario is just disgusted. After this, though, with Luigi and Daisy's insistence, Mario is more willing to trust the fungus. During the climax, while Mario battles Koopa, Luigi and Daisy attempt to stop and then undo the merging of the dimensions. Then, both of the Mario Brothers hit Koopa with Devo-Guns, reducing him to primordial slime. But once they're ready to go back home, Luigi has to accept that Daisy can't go back and be with him just yet, that she still needs to find her identity. Upon returning without her, he's pretty glum for the next three weeks, until Daisy suddenly shows up, telling them she needs their help with another crisis. Like the now more open-minded Mario, Luigi is more than willing to help her.

It's strange how, instead of Princess Peach (in America, the first time she was called "Peach" was in Super Mario 64 but, in Japan, that was always her name), they made the female lead Daisy (Samantha Mathis), based on a character who first appeared in Super Mario Land. But, what's even crazier is how her depiction here is on point with how she would come to be depicted in later games, making me wonder if Nintendo took some inspiration from it. Like the game character, this Daisy is very tomboyish, both in how she dresses and her interest in dinosaurs and the excavation of their bones. In fact, she considers herself to be something of an oddball because of it, and is sure that Luigi will be put off by it, only to be delighted when he tells her he thinks it's interesting. And that's another thing: in the games, Daisy is Luigi's love interest, so it makes since for that to be the case here. Like Peach, or Princess Toadstool, she's captured by Koopa's minions and held captive in his hideout, while Mario and Luigi have to rescue her. It turns out she's the long lost princess of this alternate dimension, with her father having been overthrown and devolved into fungus by Koopa, while her mother (also played by Samantha Mathis in the opening) took her to the other dimension and left her at the Catholic orphanage in Brooklyn. She also left with her a rock fragment that Daisy has always worn around her neck, knowing it's all she has of her parents. The rock, which is actually a piece of the meteorite that both wiped out most of the dinosaurs and created the alternate dimension, is why Koopa kidnaps her, as it has to be placed back into the meteor to merge the dimensions. During the time she's held prisoner by Koopa, Daisy goes through an existential crisis as she slowly learns of her lineage and also becomes a target for Koopa's mistress, Lena, jealous of his interest in her. Fortunately for Daisy, she befriends Yoshi, a pet dinosaur of the royal family, who rescues her when Lena attempts to kill her. Moreover, she's lucky that she befriended Toad after he was devolved into a Goomba, and that Iggy and Spike are actually on her side, taking her to her father. Though disturbed at what her father has become, Daisy is surprisingly accepting and later introduces Mario and Luigi to him.

Mathis' performance as Daisy is nothing amazing but it is charming and likable. The problem is that, for much of the movie, she doesn't have much to do except be Koopa's prisoner, like in the games. Thankfully, though, she's not dumb or a screaming damsel in distress. She actually tries to talk Lena into helping her escape, since she doesn't want her there to begin with, and when that doesn't work, she takes the initiative when Yoshi attacks Lena and runs. She's also good enough to help Toad 

when he gets set on fire by some other Goombas and tells Mario that Daniella and some other women were captured, leading him to save them. For much of the climax, she and Luigi try to stop the dimensional merge, then undo it, foiling Koopa's plan before it can even get started. And once Koopa has been defeated, Daisy opts to stay in Dinohattan for a while, both to repair the damage Koopa caused and also to find out who she is and get to know her father, much to Luigi's chagrin. But, at the end of the movie, she returns to Brooklyn, telling the Mario Brothers that she needs their help again.

When I think about it, this was, very possibly, the first movie I ever saw with Dennis Hopper. I don't know how to feel about that, and I'm not sure he would, either. When I watch his performance as Koopa, I see a guy who's decided, "You know what? Screw it. This movie is stupid, and I'm just gonna go with it!" Even though he, like the other actors, stopped memorizing his lines because of the constant rewrites, and once got so angry at the directors that he held up shooting for almost three hours while he ranted (how can you have the energy to be angry for that long?), Hopper does seem to be having some fun in playing Koopa as clear-cut a villain as you can get. Having overthrown the original king of this alternate dimension, and sick of ruling nothing but a nasty, fungus-infested city, all he wants is to merge the dimensions and take over the human dimension. He's had to wait twenty years for Scapelli's Construction Company to uncover the portal and, now that they have, he becomes frustrated at how constantly close he is to achieving his goal, yet so far at the same time. First, it's due to Iggy and Spike's stupidity, kidnapping a bunch of other women they mistook for Daisy, and then, when they actually do capture her, forget about the rock. Second, he learns that Mario and Luigi have the rock, puts an APB out on them, and when they're arrested, acts as a lawyer who's been hired to help them. He tries to play it cool, but when he thinks the Mario Brothers are playing dumb when he asks about the rock, he loses it, attacks Luigi, and then takes them to the De-Vo chamber. He demonstrates it on Toad, turning him into a Goomba, only for Mario and Luigi to escape and make it out into the desert. After making Iggy and Spike smart so that they don't make any more mistakes, Koopa talks with Daisy, and it's clear he has other intentions for her aside from the dimensional merge. He also has to deal with his mistress, Lena, growing jealous of Daisy and then turning against him altogether, attempting to merge the dimensions himself, in addition to Mario and Luigi's continued interference.

Hopper is a lot of fun to watch, one because of the overt superiority complex he gives Koopa regarding everyone and everything around him, especially humans. He doesn't like touching anyone, particularly humans, and when he does, he makes sure to promptly disinfect his hands. He's also very proud of his lineage, being descended from Tyrannosaurus Rex, "The Lizard King, thank you very much," and often holds his hands in a similar manner. Second, he has so many

memorable lines and moments. When he first acts like a lawyer for the Mario Brothers, calling himself, "Larry Lazard, of 'Lazard, Lazard, Conda, Dactyl, & Cohen,'" he tries to act all friendly, telling them that Koopa, "Is one evil, egg-sucking son of a snake." And after he's attacked Luigi, he asks him, "Did I lie?" He seems to really like saying "Goomba," as he says it constantly to the devolved Toad, telling him, "Walk tall, be proud! Go Goomba!" Later, when he's in a mud bath with Lena, he randomly tells her, "Do you know what I

love about mud? It's clean and it's dirty at the same time." When he first speaks with Daisy, he tells her about Yoshi, saying, "You may pet him. Just, uh, don't move your hands around like a small, wounded animal," then makes a chomp with his teeth. Of course, we can't forget the pizza he orders, the "Koopa Special," asking for Pterodactyl tail, as well as, "Dino, lizard, hold the mammal, no worms, and, uh, spicy." Later, when he has the rock, he declares, "Muster the Goombas! Hand out the devolution guns! Prepare for destiny!... Where's

my pizza?" And when it does arrive, he's in the middle of a confrontation with Mario, Luigi, and Daisy, and tells the deliveryman over his walkie-talkie, "Not now!" Finally, even though it's dumb, I can't help but smile when Koopa devolves Scapelli into a chimpanzee and gleefully exclaims, "Monkey!"

I have to admit that, while it definitely wasn't what I or anybody was expecting, Hopper's look as Koopa is memorable, especially that weird, frilled haircut. It looks like he's got gills running up the back of his head and to the top, and from the front, it almost seems as though he has horns. He also dresses really nice, wearing a number of cool suits, including that completely black number he wears throughout the movie's entire latter half. Though totally humanoid for the most part, save for the

dinosaurian way he holds his hands in front of his chest, after he gets put through the De-Vo machine, he begins to display more reptilian characteristics. When he talking with Daisy, a long, lizard-like tongue comes out of his mouth at one point, and his forehead slightly morphs a few seconds later. At the end of the movie, when Mario and Luigi blast him with the De-Vo guns, Koopa turns into a reptilian monster, the closest he ever comes to looking like his game counterpart. It sucks they didn't do more with him while he was like this but,

by this point, the budget had run out. He's then devolved further into a traditional Tyrannosaurus, before turning into primordial slime and spilling onto the ground below.

Koopa's cousins, Iggy (Fisher Stevens) and Spike (Richard Edson), are two bumbling, moronic henchmen who are initially tasked with crossing over to the other dimension, abducting Daisy, and bringing her back, along with the meteorite fragment. However, they're so stupid that they end up abducting and bringing back a bunch of other women, including Mario's girlfriend, Daniella, before they finally get it right. And even then, Mario and Luigi get a hold of the rock, which Iggy and Spike forgot was important, much to Koopa's frustration. It makes you wonder why he didn't task somebody more competent with it. When Mario and Luigi escape Dinohattan and end up in the desert, Koopa becomes all the more frustrated when Iggy and Spike don't take the initiative and go out after them. Thus, he decides to use the De-Vo machine on them, only in reverse to significantly enhance their intelligence. While smarter, Iggy and Spike, at first, decide that Koopa's plan for them to follow the plumbers out into the desert doesn't seem logical and suggest they formulate their own strategy. It's only when Koopa threatens to kill them that they do as he says, but are captured by Mario and Luigi instead. After telling them the details of Koopa's plan, they agree to get them to Daisy if they get the rock back. And then, after sneaking back into Dinohattan and getting Mario and Luigi into the nightclub where Big Bertha, the one who took the rock, works, Iggy and Spike randomly decide to turn on Koopa. This attitude, naturally, gets them arrested, but in the tower, they manage to escape the Goomba guards holding them prisoner and bring Daisy to her father, saying they've always been on his side. Again, this comes out of nowhere. Did their newfound smarts make they decide to overthrow their dictatorial cousin? Or were they originally made stupid by Koopa so they'd be more obedient? I'm sure there was material that fleshed this out which was lost in the extensive and chaotic editing.

While there have definitely been better comedy duos, Iggy and Spike are fine, for the most part. Their looks are memorable, with their silly clothes and hairstyles, especially Spike, and their banter is kind of funny, both when they're idiots and when they become smarter, though that's mostly due to Stevens and Edson themselves. Early on, they threw their ever-changing script into the "fuck it" bucket and just improvised their dialogue. When they're stalking around Brooklyn, looking for the

princess, Iggy and Spike have nervous exchanges about how Koopa is going to kill them if they keep messing up, as well as prove how stupid they are when attempting to stalk someone. When they mistake Daniella for the princess, they have this exchange: "I'm gonna go get her." "I'm gonna go get her." "Wait a minute. We'll follow her and then we'll both go get her." "Good idea. I'll bag her, you grab her." "No, I'll grab her, you bag her." "That's what I said." "Exactly." And after they realize 

Daniella wasn't the princess either: "We were wrong again. How many times have we got this wrong?" "You've gotten it wrong five times." "Home for five. Home for five. What percent is that?" "I dunno. Let me think... I dunno. But it's not good." "If we get it wrong one more time, he's gonna kill us." "He's not gonna kill us. He's not that nice." When facing Koopa and explaining their screw-ups, the two of them tend to blame each other, calling each other stupid. But once they're made smarter, they become politer and more

complimentary of each other, as well as more confident. After struggling and yelling, Iggy, once he's put through the process, ponders, "Oh, my. How peculiar." Spike says, "Quite an agreeable transmogrification," and Iggy responds, "More like a, um, transfiguration." Spike then remarks, "Ah, a simple metamorphosis," and they both exchange, "Hmms," and, "Aahs." During the section where they're with Mario and Luigi, they have some nice back and forth with them as well, both in childish insults between Iggy, Spike, and Luigi, and in compliments to how "acceptable" they are, for mammals. And while they all but disappear before the climax, they reappear in a sort of infamous post-credits stinger.

Lena (Fiona Shaw), Koopa's mistress, is obviously planning to rule the two dimensions alongside him after the merge, and is not happy when he says he needs both the rock and Daisy herself. At one point, when the two of them are in a mud bath, Koopa tells her to bring Daisy to him. Figuring out which of the captured women is her, she takes Daisy to a dressing room and has her put on a dress and necklace that once belonged to her mother. She tells Daisy, "She was an inspiration... to some." When asked about her father, Lena cryptically tells her that he is alive in some sense, then adds, "I don't care whose daughter you are. Koopa thinks you're the only who can merge the dimensions. I've waited too long to let all this slip away." Lena takes it upon herself to capture Mario and Luigi when the two of them are spotted at the Boom-Boom bar, but instead gets the rock from them and has Iggy and Spike arrested for betraying Koopa. Back at the tower, she offers herself to him as a potential co-ruler, but Koopa is too aggravated and preoccupied with how everything is falling apart to listen. Accusing him of being more interested in Daisy, Lena decides to use the rock to merge the dimensions herself. Before doing so, she tries to kill Daisy, but Yoshi's intervention allows her to escape. After badly wounding Yoshi, Lena has the Goomba troops deployed to devolve the humans in the other dimension. But Koopa, knowing she did this without his orders, has her arrested. The rock is taken from her and given to him but, in the chaos of the climax, she, after somehow escaping detention, manages to get her hands on it again. Despite falling onto a transformer and getting shocked to where her hair makes her look like the Bride of Frankenstein, she runs to the meteorite with the rock and attempts the merge. However, she's killed in the process, reduced to a skeleton embedded in the cavern wall.

The way they make use of the character of Toad (Mojo Nixon) is an interesting one. Instead of a little mushroom guy, he's a humanoid, street-side guitarist, with a haircut that consists of a bob where his bangs would be, while the backside is shaved to look like a spiral. He gets arrested, along with Mario and Luigi, for playing a song defaming Koopa. He continues singing while imprisoned with the brothers, getting on Mario's nerves, and tells them of the two dimensions, as well as his

theory that the fungus that coats the city is their old king after Koopa got through devolving him. Speaking of devolving, Toad is put through the De-Vo machine as punishment, turned into a Goomba. When he joins the other Goombas, he's given a harmonica, which he plays often, and even though he's supposed to be stupid and loyal to Koopa, he's friendlier than the others. He makes friends with Daisy, bringing her a plate of steamed vegetables like she asked, although she's trying to escape at the time. He gets set on fire by some other Goombas who attempt to stop Daisy, but she's good enough to spray him with a fire extinguisher while he's burning. He remains a loyal friend of hers afterward, giving her and Luigi some De-Vo guns during the climax and using his harmonica to make the other Goombas dance so they don't hurt Mario. He also appears with her at the end, saying goodbye to Mario and Luigi.

Another character from the games whose usage is arguably stranger is Big Bertha, a big red fish who appeared as an enemy in Super Mario Bros. 3. Here, she's made into a tough, heavyset bouncer (Francesca P. Roberts), wearing a memorable red, leather trench-coat, lined with spikes, as well as a spiked collar. Her entrance is also unforgettable. When Mario and Luigi are held up by an aggressive old woman who takes the rock from them, Bertha grabs the woman, throws her over the railing, and takes the rock for herself. When Mario asks if she could give it back to them, she activates the pair of rocket boots she's wearing, called "Stompers" and says, "Come and get it, big boy," before blasting off. Once she's on a walkway across from them, she walks off, now wearing the rock herself. Later, when Mario and Luigi find her at the Boom-Boom Bar where she works, Mario attempts to charm her into giving it to him. First, she just decks him in the face, but when he hits her up on the dance floor, telling her, "Will you hit me again? I've never seen such fluidity. The way your knuckles crunched as you smashed 'em into my face," Bertha grabs him by his jacket and answers, "Dance with me. I'll hit you all you like." The two of them then start dancing, rather provocatively too, with Mario continuously trying to get the rock from her, at one point putting his face into her cleavage and grabbing it with his mouth (it feels like I just described something from Super Hornio Bros.). Eventually, he does get it back, but while you'd expect Bertha to be angry when she realizes it's gone, she instead helps Mario and Luigi escape from Lena and the Goomba guards. She leads them into the front office, points them to a pair of Stompers, then calls Mario over to her, calling him "Pudgy-Buns," and gives him a genuine kiss on the lips. And during the climax, she tosses Luigi a pair of Stompers so he can help Mario. It seems like Mario wasn't kidding when he said nobody could resist his family's charms.

Rounding out the cast is Daniella (Dana Kaminski), Mario's girlfriend who works at a tanning salon and comes off as street-smart but also good-hearted, encouraging Luigi's relationship with Daisy as much as Mario. Unfortunately for her, she gets mistaken for the princess by Iggy and Spike and is abducted back to Dinohattan, the latest of many screw-ups the two of them make before they finally get it right. Thus, she gets caught up in the madness late in the film when

Mario has to rescue her and the other girls. Though he has very little screentime, Scapelli (Gianni Russo), the Mario Brothers' biggest competitor, comes off as a typical mafioso, making not so subtle threats to Daisy about how her digging is holding up his construction, as well as a sleazebag with how he eyes her. When the dimensions are momentarily merged, Koopa devolves him into a chimpanzee (which makes no scientific sense but, then again, it's Super Mario Bros.), and it's seemingly never reversed. And finally, when the

king of Dinohattan is reverted back to his human form at the end, he turns out to be Lance Henriksen, of all people. I don't know what's weirder: that they put him in the movie for just a scant few seconds or that they were also going to not only have a cameo with Bruce Willis but he was actually supposed to be John McClane, making his way through the air vents in Koopa's tower.

When you reflect on it, you can sympathize with the dilemma the filmmakers behind Super Mario Bros. had, as it was not only the first live-action film based on a video game but they were working with source material that, especially back then, is nigh impossible to translate to live-action. But, that said, I still find the direction they took to be just baffling, especially since one of the early drafts, as we saw, had a nice way of going about it. The look and feel of the movie is just off-putting from the get-go. Though the first thing you hear is the

classic Mario Brothers theme from the original game, that's very quickly scrapped, as you get this badly animated opening, with stiff movements and a weird filter that makes it look like those early FMV games on the Sega-CD, while a Brooklyn-accented narrator (Dan Castellaneta) gives us a basic rundown about the dinosaurs and how they were wiped out by a meteorite. On top of that, you have Frank Welker voicing a couple of dinosaurs, as a Brontosaurus tells a Triceratops, "You know, it

just don't get no better than this." And after the meteorite hits, the narrator lays out the movie's entire premise for us: "But what if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteor created a parallel dimension where the dinosaurs continued to thrive and evolve into intelligent, vicious, and aggressive beings... just like us? And hey, what if they found a way back?" It's such a lazy and uncreative way to try to get the audience up to speed, especially when we can easily guess we're in an alternate dimension, even before Toad lays it out for the brothers, and much of the dialogue, including Koopa's first lines, tell us it's due to the meteorite and that everyone here has evolved from dinosaurs.

The Mario games have always been bright, colorful, and positively whimsical, but after that prologue, we see a woman rush through the stormy, rain-soaked streets of Brooklyn, leave something on the doorstep of a Catholic orphanage, and then die in a cave-in when she heads down into the sewer. Furthermore, as some nuns watch on, the large egg inside the container the woman left on hatches to reveal a seemingly human baby, as lightning continues flashing outside, illuminating the stained glass windows and their shocked faces.

Again, not at all what people were expecting when they went into a movie based on the Mario games. But after that, when we're introduced to Mario and Luigi, and see them bumbling around, trying to get to a potential job, it's more on the line of what people probably had in mind (despite how much John Leguizamo doesn't feel like Luigi), but it's offset by the subplot involving the mafioso and the unearthing of dinosaur bones beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the sabotage and the brothers

having to actually use their plumber skills, the least emphasized aspect of their characters in the games, to stop it. But it's when we get to Dinohattan that the movie becomes virtually nothing like the games. I doubt anybody expected the movie to take place in a crowded, polluted, dystopian, Blade Runner-like city, covered in nasty fungus, populated by humanoids evolved from dinosaurs, policed by Goombas who look nothing like the enemies in the games, and ruled over by a version of Bowser, or King Koopa, who's Dennis Hopper in a business suit with a frilled haircut.

Even most people who flat-out hate the movie have to admit that the design of Dinohattan and this whole other world is a memorable one. The portal from the human world leads into an enormous chamber housing the meteorite that caused the dimensional rift, with a long tunnel leading from there leading to a large, metal door that opens up into the city itself. Again, the place is often compared to the dystopian Los Angeles in Blade Runner and it's not wholly an accident, as production designer David Snyder worked on both

movies. It is also definitely akin to Anton Furst's look for Gotham City in Batman, with that same dirty, crime-riddled aesthetic and overall unpleasant air about the buildings' construction, combined with Blade Runner's feeling of rampant pollution and overcrowding. Dinohattan has different levels to it: the actual street, pedestrian walkways above one another, and then the various buildings as they reach up into the sky. Everything looks ugly and unwelcoming, as there's a bunch of tacky neon, constant sparks, steam coming up out

of sewer vents, establishments just as an apparent porn theater, masses of the fungus that was once the king, tiny dinosaurs that act as street vermin, and a feeling of too many people in one small space that can really get to you if you're claustrophobic. Of course, Koopa's name and face are all over the city, with parts of it even named after him and his mug seen on billboards and neon signs. Then, there are the citizens themselves. While most of them look like normal humans,

others have reptilian features, like scales or horns, and a woman is seen walking with a baby stroller housing an egg. Even the elderly aren't as harmless as you might think, as an old woman holds up Mario and Luigi with a taser-like gun. The police are basically Koopa's storm-troopers, with uniforms that consist of black leather-jackets with spikes lining the arms and whose weapons are flamethrowers that shoot fireballs. The police cars have starters that take Mario a minute to figure out,

though Luigi finds it easy to operate and access their onboard computers (he says it's because he plays video games all the time), engines that send out sparks when activated, a bulldozer-like plow on their fronts, and long rods that stick out of their back which scrape along the underside of the walkways, for some reason. They're powered by the city's own grid, shutting off when they go outside the city limits, and they don't have any brakes; instead, there are long cables meant to stop them in their tracks. The other cars in the city dont' appear to have brakes either, for the most part, which is probably why there are constant crashes on the street.

The interiors of the police station are especially oppressive, as the whole thing is inside an enormous, factory-like building, with the ceiling being high above both the outside doors and even the garage where the cars are kept. The immediate interiors consist of claustrophobic corridors that are nearly bursting with people, and a tall desk that the character of Sgt. Simon sits behind when Mario and Luigi are first brought before him. The boys are put through a decontamination process to get rid of any fungus on them, which consists of being

sprayed with a really cold chemical and splashed with what looks like blue Gatorade. They're then taken to a room where they're handcuffed to a wall that measures height and it looks as though they're about to be shot with laser sights, only for it to be their mugshots. The "cells" are actually just rows of small cages that are stacked on top of each other, with Mario and Luigi getting locked up in the one below Toad's, and some of the prisoners are caged up so high that the officers have to use a rising

platform to reach them. When they first meet Koopa when he masquerades as a lawyer, it's inside one of many offices that don't even have a roof. But the most imposing part of the place is the De-Vo Chamber, an enormous white room above the station itself, with multiple levels and yellow pipes, containing the machine that Koopa uses to either devolve people into Goombas or, in the case of Iggy and Spike, enhance their intelligence. The victim in question is strapped to a chair that's rolled backwards and hoisted up into this chamber where their head is blasted and put through the process.

Yet another thing I didn't expect to see in this movie was an ugly, neon-infested club called the "Boom-Boom," where these dinosaur humanoids dance around on a grated walkway above the place's parking lot. Sometimes, they do a dance where they keep their torsos rigidly in place and shake their heads in a very freakish manner. In any case, the place itself has everything you'd expect: a bar, lots of neon lighting that tends to change colors, a static-filled TV screen behind the dance floor, and a spot near the door where you hang

your accessories (in this case, Mario and Luigi leave behind their tool-belts, leading to them nearly being captured). I also still can't get over the sequence where Mario attempts to get the rock back from Big Bertha, with the fairly provocative dances and moves they do. Speaking of which, I have a feeling this is the scene where, according to John Leguizamo, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel attempted to put in real strippers, which naturally got edited out..

The most noteworthy environment, however, is Koopa's tower, where he, literally and figuratively, looks down on the city and everyone else that dwells within it. His main room is something of a penthouse, with a bubbling mud bath, a black bed, and, at the bottom of some stairs, his desk and control panel. Elsewhere in this chamber is the room where he first meets with Daisy, which is a sitting room with a blue couch and some black pillows with spikes, a fireplace, and a globe showing the extent of this world, which is

Dinohattan in the middle of an expansive desert that covers the whole planet. While Daisy and the other girls are initially held captive in a bland, oppressive room, Koopa later puts Daisy in an amber-colored room that Lena says was once her office. When Mario and Luigi arrive and sneak inside, they enter the room where the building's heating system is housed, find their uniforms in the nearby locker-room, then make use of the elevators and climb up into the deep shafts and through the

fungus-riddled ventilation tunnels. Memorably, the corridors and hallways' walls have black, blue, and gray paint schemes, often with a pattern consisting of inverted triangles sticking out of them, and doors that tend to be painted a red color and sometimes look like mouths opening from the sides. But the most notable room, by far, is De-Vo Chamber 4, a bland, gray-colored room with a small stairwell. In the center is the king's old throne, above which hangs the mass of fungus that used to be him and is the base for the fungus that's spread throughout the city.

As a messed up, dystopian version of Manhattan, Dinohattan is meant to be, according to David Snyder, the end result of Koopa catching only a glimpse of New York during the opening and getting it completely wrong when attempting to replicate it. This comes down not just to the city's overall warped and twisted look, but details like its own Statue of Liberty and version of the World Trade Center, with one of the towers being Koopa's stronghold. And, as much as I don't want to bring it up, there's no denying that the one half-destroyed

tower and the other with the large hole through the center hasn't aged well at all, especially when, during the dimensional merge near the end, the real Twin Towers are temporarily replaced with Koopa's. Like James Rolfe said in his review, it hearkens back to an innocent time when we thought something like that couldn't really happen. Like the real Manhattan, Dinohattan is an island, only it's an island in the middle of an otherwise endless desert, the "Koopahari Desert," filled with

patches of thick mud, little scavenging dinosaurs that act like jackals, and toxic garbage dumps outside the city limits. To get around in this area, it's best to use a wedge-shaped, landrover-like vehicle which Iggy and Spike attempt operate, or the dump trucks used by the Snifits, called "sludge-gulpers."

Speaking of the Snifits, based on the enemies that first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 2, while they may not physically resemble their game counterparts, they have the basics down: humanoids wearing gas masks. In this case, they're used as Dinohattan's garbage disposal, and while we don't see their faces, the trilling sounds they make suggest they may not be as evolved as most of the denizens. They're actually far more game accurate than the Goombas, who are depicted as humanoid dinosaurs with small heads atop massive

bodies, wearing reddish-brown overcoats over gray and dull-blue shirts, with spikes on their shoulders, symbols on their arms, and black leather belts and shoulder straps. When Toad is devolved into one, the leader of the Goombas gives him a harmonica he wears around his neck. There are two types of Goombas: some have the round heads that make them look somewhat akin to those in the games, while others have narrow, lizard-like snouts, which makes me wonder if they're also the movie's way of doing the Koopa-Troopas. As Koopa himself

says, the Goombas are stupid but loyal, for the most part. While most of them are pretty aggressive, despite their stupidity, Toad remains benevolent, as he befriends Daisy and goes out of his way to get her some steamed vegetables as opposed to the meat she turns down. Their low intelligence proves to be a handicap, as Mario and Luigi find they can be easily manipulated into dancing to music, and they also blast each other with their flamethrower weapons. Yoshi, who'd just

debuted in Super Mario World, also appears in the film as a pet of the royal family. Koopa insinuates he can be aggressive but, given how friendly he is towards Daisy, you find that hard to believe. But, when Lena attempts to kill Daisy, Yoshi fiercely defends her, snagging her foot with his long tongue and then chomping on it. He gets stabbed in the side but survives. Like the Goombas, Frank Welker does Yoshi's vocals.

There are other references to the game, with some signs in Dinohattan saying "Thwomp," "Bullet Bills," "Hammer Bros. Tattoos," and, "Ostro," while the taxi Daisy is forced into by Iggy and Spike when they first capture her is advertising a drink called "Wiggler." The Boom-Boom Bar that features prominently in the second act is named after the enemies in Mario Bros. 3 you have to face at the end of every fortress, and the king transforming back into his actual form at the end of the movie is akin to what happens when you

complete each world in that game. In fact, there are a lot references to that one in particular. The Stomper boots the Mario Brothers end up using are not only based on the Goomba's Shoe item from Mario Bros. 3 but are also powered by charges that look just like the actual Bullet Bills. As I already mentioned, Big Bertha is named after an enemy from Mario Bros. 3, as are Iggy and Spike, with the former named after one of Bowser's sons in that game, while the latter is named after a random, obscure enemy. And not only does all the fungus

refer back to their prominence in the games but Koopa even calls Dinohattan a "Mushroom Kingdom" at one point. But the most accurate reference is the Bob-Omb, which features during the climax. It is exactly what you would expect: a little wind-up bomb with feet that walks around with its fuse lit, and its design is a dead ringer for the game sprite. There are also some familiar game sound effects sprinkled throughout the movie, such as the "lose a life" sound for when the Stompers

are activated and a random "1-Up" sound in the background of a scene with Koopa. Finally, while it's not at all done in the manner you would expect, the film's basic plot is that of the original game: two plumbers travel through a strange world in order to save a princess from the clutches of an evil reptile king.

Yet another thing I definitely was not expecting from a Super Mario Bros. movie was to be grossed out as much as I was. Like I mentioned earlier, this movie is often ridiculously disgusting. It starts early on, when you see Daisy hatch from her egg, covered in slime, mucus, and pieces of eggshell, but when they arrive in Dinohattan, it really gets gross. Immediately, you see the slimy fungus everywhere, as well as the little dinosaurs that act like scavengers fighting over a strand of it, and see just how nasty-looking some of these humanoids

are. There's also this vendor who sells some nasty-looking food, including a bunch of snakes and, in one shot, he puts a small shish kabob of tiny lizards into a hotdog-like bun. Speaking of disgusting food, Goomba Toad initially brings Daisy a plate of meat that looks like tongues to me. When we get our first real look at Koopa in his office, he's putting his hands through a decontamination process that has him sticking them into a sink-like device and, when he pulls them out, they're covered in this gray goo that quickly hardens and

dries as he walks around, before wiping his hands off. That always used to gross me out as a kid, mainly because I didn't understand what he was doing, and even still, it gets to me. While the de-evolution process isn't gross, just crazy, in one shot, there's a puddle of green slime on the floor, a holdover from a moment that was deleted where someone was devolved into slime. Speaking of which, when Koopa himself gets devolved into slime at the end of the movie, it's pretty gross, too,

as it is when he and Lena are in that bubbling mud bath, the latter holding a small snake, for whatever reason. And at the Boom-Boom Bar, Lena gulps down a drink with a worm-like creature in it that screams for mercy (I've read Fiona Shaw didn't know that was in there until she drank it but managed to be and pro keep her head about her). But the grossest part of it all is the light-brown mass of mucus-dripping fungus that used to be the king. Hanging down from the ceiling in one room,

he has a head-like part that he can pull back up into the rest of the mass, and while we get a glimpse of him when Koopa speaks with him, it's only when Iggy and Spike bring Daisy to him that we see him in all in his "glory." It really is disgusting, as mucus and slime not only drip from the mass but it pulsates and can even be heard breathing. Again, as a kid, I didn't understand what he was supposed to be and it just added all the more to the movie's off-putting nature.

In terms of its effects work, the movie does have some nice practical creature effects, specifically for Yoshi and the Goombas. Yoshi is especially impressive, particularly when you see him walking around freely, and the producers of Jurassic Park are said to have been so blown away by it that they almost considered hiring the people behind it to work alongside Stan Winston's team. As for the Goombas, the animatronics for their heads and facial expressions are very nice, and I like the attention to detail that, not only are there two

distinct types, but they each have their own individual character, with Toad, for example, retaining his spiraling haircut as a pattern on the back of his head. However, their overall design is a bit on the clunky side, as you can tell by their big, broad shoulders that the animatronic heads are sitting above the suit actors' actual heads, and their movements tend to be really awkward. As for Koopa's devolved form, I, again, really wish we

got to see more of the monster he initially becomes before being turned into a regular T-Rex and then into slime. I've read that there was more to that particular creature effect, but you only see minute bits and pieces of it in the final movie. Speaking of devolution, when Koopa hits Anthony Scapelli with his De-Vo gun, you see him go through several stages, from a primitive caveman and then to a tiny caveman, only for them to completely cheap out by having him ultimately become a real chimpanzee. Given everything else we've seen in this movie, that feels so unimaginative.

Another thing Super Mario Bros. has in common with Jurassic Park is that it was among the first movies to make fairly extensive use of digital effects. Some effects that were considered cutting edge at the time haven't aged nearly as well as the work done in Jurassic Park or Terminator 2, chief among them being the image of Daisy's face appearing through the rock wall while yelling for Mario and Luigi, the disintegration effect when they pass between dimensions, the moments when Koopa's reptile nature comes through while he's

talking to Daisy, or when, during the climax, Mario uses a piece of mushroom to deflect Koopa's De-Vo gun, with the mushroom expanding in order to do so. However, there are others that hold up pretty well, like the psychedelic visual of Mario falling from one dimension to another, the sight of Toad's head being morphed into that of a Goomba, the disintegration effect when the dimensional merge happens during the climax, and, most impressively, a shot where the camera pans towards the

Dinohattan skyline, through the missing chunk of the one tower, and then towards a window in Koopa's tower to reveal Daisy looking out. Also, when Koopa gets devolved from his initial monster form to the typical T-Rex, it may not be as realistic as Jurassic Park but, for what they were going for, it's not bad. And there are some pretty good blue screen and miniature effects, with either the desert or Dinohattan in the background of some shots, and the effects used when the Mario Brothers nearly crash their car off a cliff while escaping the city.

Following the bizarre opening and Daisy being left at the Catholic orphanage as an egg, the movie's first noteworthy scene is when Mario and Luigi are introduced and they head off to a job. Though Mario tells Luigi, who's driving, to turn left, he instead goes right, telling his brother he has a "good feeling" about the alleyway they're driving down. He goes on to say his instincts are telling him it'll be faster, as he heads up a hill and plows through some trash left on a curb. They reach the

parking lot of their potential job, as Luigi blabs, "I read that sea turtles navigate thousands of miles on instinct," to which Mario retorts, "Not in New York traffic, they don't." Luigi pulls into a parking space and he and Mario disembark after grabbing their tool-belts out of the back. But then, they see the Scapellis beat them to another job. (I believe this is the scene where John Leguizamo, being completely sauced, as he often was, hit the brakes so fast that the van's open door slid shut and

smashed Bob Hoskins' hand, forcing him to wear a flesh-colored cast for the rest of the shoot. This was one of many injuries Hoskins claimed to have received during the shoot.) Following the scene where Daisy is formally introduced when she's threatened at the dig site by Anthony Scapelli himself, we're also introduced to Iggy and Spike, as Spike returns to the car they're sitting in with a couple of hotdogs. Spike tells him that it's supposedly "dog," and they throw the buns away and eat the meat. They spot Daisy and Iggy says

she must be the princess because she has, "Two arms, one head, two legs." Meanwhile, the Mario Brothers have to pull over as their van's radiator is overheating. While Mario works on the radiator, Luigi goes to a payphone to check their answering machine for potential jobs. Iggy and Spike, not very subtly, stalk Daisy down the sidewalk, the latter slamming into a big pane of glass being carried along. Missing his chance, he goes back to Iggy, who shoves him for blowing it. 

Mario goes to get some water for the radiator, while Luigi listens to their apartment's answering machine. Daisy shows up and paces back and forth, desperate to call the university, while Luigi is so taken with her that he doesn't hear a message about a department store that's badly flooded and needs every available plumber. He lets her use the phone, as well as gives her a quarter for it, while Mario comes back out, angry that he had to spend three bucks for a bottle of water. While she's talking,

Luigi points her out to Mario, who encourages his brother to talk with her. After getting off the phone, irked that those at the university aren't going to do anything to help with Scapelli, she thanks Luigi for letting her use the phone. Luigi awkwardly attempts to talk with her, offering to drive her back, forgetting that the van's not working, and then even more awkwardly talks about her name. Mario finally stops his brother from embarrassing himself even more and offers Daisy a ride in their van,

which he just fixed. Driving her back to the site beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, Mario prods Luigi into inviting her to dinner that night, which he does. After dinner, Luigi and Daisy go off by themselves, while Mario takes Daniella home. Unbeknownst to them, they're being watched by Iggy and Spike, who mistake Daniella for Daisy, wearing a disguise. They follow the van, smashing into the left, rear-edge of a car parked in front of them, and plan to kidnap Daniella when they get the chance. While Daisy takes Luigi back to the dig site, Mario drops Daniella off at her apartment, Once he's gone, Iggy and Spike come running up the stairs behind her, grab her, and throw a hood over her head as she screams for Mario.

Luigi and Daisy playfully race each other to the dig site, Daisy showing him through the gate and leading him down to the tunnel. When they reach the site, Daisy shows him the unusual dinosaur fossils they've uncovered but, despite his interest in them, Luigi proves to be far more interested in Daisy. Before they can go further than just looking at each other, a couple of men come running out of a tunnel to their left and head back the way they came. Seeing the Scapelli name on the back of

their white uniforms, they turn to the tunnel they came from and realize they've sabotaged the water-pipes. Though Daisy is happy that Luigi is there, Luigi doesn't really know what to do. They run back to his and Mario's apartment and tell him what's happened. Hearing Scapelli's name is all it takes for Mario to grab his tool-belt and tell Luigi, "Strap your belt on, kid. We're goin' in." Back at the site, Mario proves how skilled he is when he figures out what the problem is and has Luigi hand

him the tools necessary to do it. Elsewhere, Iggy and Spike, having messed up again, attempt to rectify their mistake one last time before Koopa kills them for real. Mario manages to fix the pipe and he and Luigi prepare to finish it up. But then, Iggy and Spike walk into the room behind them, knock them out with blows to the back of the head, and abduct Daisy. In the next cut, the Mario Brothers have already come to and are running through the tunnels, trying to locate the source of Daisy's yelling. Mario is able to pinpoint it and

they head down the one tunnel, only to find it narrows to a ledge over a large fissure in the rocks. Luigi drops their flashlight down there, as Mario tries to get him to turn back. Regardless, he continues along the ledge, yelling for Daisy, when they see the image of her face appear in a wall of supposed solid rock on the other side of the fissure. Not sure what to make of this, when her face appears a second time, Luigi tries to lunge towards the rock. Mario grabs him and pulls him back, but Daisy comes through just enough for Luigi to grab

her necklace and yank it off. Trying to collect themselves, Luigi tells Mario he has a feeling he has to go with, while Mario insists the wall is solid rock. Luigi then kisses Mario on the side of his head and jumps towards the rock, disintegrating into the other dimension. Shocked, Mario gingerly attempts to reach for the rock, losing his balance and then righting himself a few times, before falling forward and disappearing into the other dimension.

Mario falls through the literal gap between the dimensions, then comes out the other side to find Luigi waiting for him. Seeing Iggy and Spike dragging Daisy down a tunnel, they chase after them and go through a metal door to find themselves in Dinohattan. Not having time to question where they are, they try to push their way through the crowd, only to find their route blocked. Heading the other way, they find themselves on a suspended walkway and then finally wonder where

in God's name they are. They see Daisy being forced into a taxi, but when Mario tries to get the assistance of some passing cops, they're forced into moving along. Trying to keep the cab in sight, they run to the edge of the platform, only for the railing to give way. They fall down and land in front of a large mass of fungus, then see a couple of small dinosaurs fighting over a strand of it. Disgusted, they get to their feet and move away from them, pulling bits of fungus off of themselves. They look

around and see that some of the people around them have reptilian traits to them, again making them wonder where they are (Mario suggests it may be the Bronx, commenting, "No wonder they tell you never to come up here,"). We're then formally introduced to Koopa, whom Iggy and Spike inform they've captured the princess, but that two plumbers have the rock. Koopa has Lena put out a "plumber alert," which sounds throughout the city (so, he's had enough problems with plumbers to where he has an alert especially for them?). 

Back with Mario and Luigi, they run into a seemingly kindly old woman who tells them it's dangerous to wander around without a weapon... and when she learns they don't have one, she pulls a taser-like gun on them. Spying Daisy's rock, she takes it from around Luigi's neck, thinking it'll fetch her some money. That's when Big Bertha makes her entrance by coming up behind the lady, picking her up, and tossing her over the side of the walkway. She lands in the back of a car on the street below, and without missing a beat, attacks

those up front with her gun. Meanwhile, Bertha now has the rock and uses her Stompers to make two high leaps from one walkway to another. She walks off with the rock now around around her neck, leaving Mario and Luigi empty-handed and demoralized.

Depressed, Mario and Luigi run into Toad, who starts playing his guitar and singing. The cops pull up when he says something disparaging about Koopa, and when Mario and Luigi intervene, the cops see their tool-belts and put them in the back with Toad. They head to the police station, while in Koopa's tower, Daisy is thrown into the room housing Daniella and the other women Iggy and Spike captured by mistake. When they reach the station, the car heads to the front door at top speed,

much to the Mario Brothers' horror. Only a tether line slows them to a stop. Once inside, they're booked (here, we learn that Mario is their actual surname). They're then put through the very unpleasant method of being decontaminated from the fungus that Toad tells them is choking the city, before having their mugshots taken by camera that look like rifles with laser sights. After spending time in a cage below the one housing Toad, the Mario Brothers meet Koopa when he passes himself off as a lawyer. They only learn of his true

identity when he loses his patience when they claim not to know about the rock and he attacks Luigi over it. He has them taken to the De-Vo Chamber, where he has Toad put through the devolution process and turned into a Goomba. He sends him to join the others, but while he's distracted, Mario and Luigi shove him into the De-Vo machine's chair. He falls right into place, becomes shackled to it, and the Mario Brothers then fight off the guards. Luigi activates the machine, turning the dial to "Jurassic," and the

two of them push Koopa towards the machine, as he futilely yells for help. While he's put through a brief session of devolution, the Mario Brothers run off. When it's done, Koopa's right eye becomes lizard-like for a second, and he yells, "I'll kill that plumber!"

Escaping the De-Vo Chamber, Mario and Luigi find themselves back in the police station. They hide around a corner covered in the fungus, when a strand holding a Bob-Omb descends down in front of them. Luigi goes to take it, but Mario spots a bunch of Goombas coming their way and pulls Luigi along. They run across the walkway and swing their way through the detention area, dodging fireballs that the Goombas fire at them. They hop off and head into the station, where

they're faced with a couple of doors. Each of them chooses a door, with Luigi having to dodge a cop who comes through his and heads into an office. He joins Mario beyond his door and the two of them find their way into the garage. With no other option, they decide to steal one of the cars and hop inside it. It takes a little bit for Mario to figure out how to operate the vehicle, while Luigi finds it easy to operate its onboard computer. Once Mario finds the ignition, they drive out of the station's garage, dodging blasts from a policeman, and get onto the busy main street of Dinohattan. Within seconds, the police are on their tail.

Their mugshots come up on the car's computer, along with a bulletin about their escape. They head down one street and Mario turns to the right, into oncoming traffic, and then into a back alleyway. The two of them bicker about Mario's driving, as he rounds a corner and the long rods sticking out of the car's rear slash into one car, causing an explosion that knocks over another car that, for whatever reason, was up onto the side of a building. Luigi says, "I'm not riding with you

anymore," and Mario, fed up, lets go of the wheel, telling Luigi to drive. Luigi grabs the wheel just as they head right for an oncoming car and they go up its front and land on its roof. They then have no choice but to leave it to the person driving the car below them. The police pass by and, realizing what they just saw, swing around and continue the chase. They go around a corner, where there's a big fire over on the curb, and another car comes flying off to the side and crashes for no reason. Finally, their

police car falls off the back of the other car and Mario is able to take control. For a moment, they relish in the chaos they're causing, until the police get on both of their sides and blast fireballs at them. Mario tells Luigi to brace himself and he hits the brakes, causing the police cars to go on down the road and blast each other. Both cars explode and the Mario Brothers drive on through the fire, doing their personal handshake. Coming to a fork, Mario is unsure of which direction to go. Luigi tells him to take the parkway and Mario turns the

car towards a tunnel. Luigi comments, "Perfect. Perfect," with a big smile on his face. Mario goes, "You said the parkway!", and Luigi retorts, "I know, but I wanted the tunnel, so I said parkway cuz I knew you'd go the opposite way I suggested! Ha!" Mario smashes through a barricade in front of the "Koopahari Desert Tunnel" and heads down into it. Their onboard computer warns that the tunnel isn't finished, and Mario finds it hard to keep the car under control, as the tunnel is full of huge flaps of fungus hanging from the walls and

ceiling. Even worse, the car shuts down since they've gone outside the power grid, and they then realize it has no brakes. They plow through the fungus and come out the end of the tunnel, which leads into a sheer drop off a cliff. As they plummet down to the ground, it looks like they're doomed. However, all the fungus they've amassed stretches and catches them. They hang in the air a few feet above the ground and, as they climb out of the car, Luigi tells Mario that the fungus saved them. Aggravated, as he thought his driving was what saved them, he and Luigi tumble down to the ground.

After Iggy and Spike tell him that the Mario Brothers have escaped into the desert, Koopa decides to increase their intelligence in hopes that they'll be more useful. At the same time, Daisy starts to learn more about who she is, as Lena brings her before Koopa, and she also meets Yoshi. Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi wander through the desert, arguing with each other about whose fault it is. Unbeknownst to them, Iggy and Spike are watching from nearby. Confirming who they are

with binoculars, Iggy joins Spike in a strange, land-roving vehicle. However, Spike's newfound intelligence doesn't make him a great driver, and he quickly loses control of the vehicle. They fly off a cliff and land with a loud crash. Mario and Luigi come running and find that Iggy and Spike fell out of it and into some thick mud. After tying them up, they make them spill the beans about Koopa's plan and his need for the rock. Iggy also reveals that Scapelli and his construction company ended up

unsealing the portal between the dimensions with their blasting. Luigi then gets them to agree to hand over Daisy in exchange for the rock. Mario breaks it to them that someone took the rock from them, and when they describe her, Iggy and Spike immediately know they're talking about Big Bertha, the bouncer at the Boom-Boom Bar. That night, on the outskirts of the city, they come across some Snifits dumping garbage and come up with a plan to hijack one of their vehicles, called "sludge-gulpers." Mario and Luigi prepare to strike with

their tools, when Luigi realizes he lost all of his. Regardless, they begin their sneak attack. Luigi pops up behind two Snifits, who using some long, pitchfork-like rods with to get trash out of the back of their sludge-gulper. He taps one on the shoulder, causing him to turn around and whack the other in the face with the pole. Mario tosses Luigi a plunger and he shoves it onto the other Snifit's face, momentarily confusing him, while Mario knocks him on the back of the head with his wrench. He falls to the ground, they remove the plunger, and

hijack the sludge-gulper. Wearing the Snifits' masks, they're able to get past the gate without any issues. Once they're through, they remove the masks, while Iggy and Spike come out of hiding in the cab, and they drive on into the city.

They arrive at the Boom-Boom Bar, Mario and Luigi dressed up in some very colorful and gaudy outfits, which Iggy says belonged to his ex-wife. Heading in, the brothers leave their tool-belts at the front, when the woman behind the main desk sees their images on a wanted poster. Naturally, she calls Koopa's tower. Meanwhile, as Iggy and Spike sit at the bar, preaching the downfall of Koopa, Mario spots Big Bertha as she walks in, pushing people out of the way. Bragging that no one can resist a Mario's charms, he walks up to her and

says, "Hey, the name's Mario. I'm your main man, your ram-a-dame, your can of spam..." And Bertha promptly lays him out on the floor and chuckles to herself as she walks away. Undeterred, Mario joins her on the dance floor, asking her to hit him again. That's when she tells him to dance with her and she'll hit him all he wants. Of course, we now get into their surprisingly erotic dance, as Mario tries to get the rock off her. The music, appropriately, changes to a slower, smoother tune, and Mario attempts to take advantage of it. He dips Bertha,

grabbing the rock with his mouth, but then lets go when she comes back up; they move around in a circle as he tries to unhook it from the back of her neck; and when she bends down in front of him, he grabs it and snags it loose when she stands back up and twirls. He then rejoins Luigi, while Bertha finds him, as well as the rock, gone, and is more hurt than angry. But just as the brothers celebrate, Lena arrives with some Goombas, blocking their exit. They're quickly spotted and come up with a plan to keep the rock away from them. When one

Goomba comes at Mario, he tosses the rock across the room to Luigi. Luigi, in turn, attempts to toss it back to him, but Mario dives for it, only for Lena to stomp on its string with her foot before it can fall through the grated floor. Iggy and Spike are arrested for rebelling against Koopa, while Luigi rushes Mario out before they can be captured as well. Heading for the front door, they find their way blocked by Bertha, only for her to knock out the woman at the desk and let them in. A pair of

Goombas attempt to break down the door, while Bertha uses her strength to hold them at bay. At first, it seems like they're trapped, but Bertha tells them to use the Stompers, pointing them toward both the boots and the cartridges that power them. She gives Mario a kiss on the lips, then the brothers strap on the boots and use them to smash their way up through the glass ceiling. Landing outside, they run for it, when Luigi, again, sees a Bob-Omb hanging from the fungus. But, again,

with Goombas after them, Mario pulls him away and they continue running. They find themselves trapped on either side of a walkway but jump into a passing sludge-gulper, figuring it will take them to Koopa's tower. As they lay among the trash, Mario comments, " How are we gonna get in there? I got two words for you: im-possible." Luigi, ever the optimist, tells him, "Nothing's impossible, Mario. Improbable, unlikely, but never impossible."

The two of them are literally dumped at the base of the tower and then look up at the enormous building and realize their daunting task of finding Daisy. Sneaking inside, they find their way into the heating system, full of pipes that Mario deduces haven't had work done to them in years. He then comes up with an idea and he and Luigi lock off all the valves in order to freeze the tower. After that, they attempt to make their way up to the top, grabbing some overalls out of a locker to make them feel more like "Marios," i.e. plumbers. Now

dressed in their iconic outfits (which the producers had to force the directors to fit into the movie in the first place), they take the elevator up, only for it to stop at one floor and for a pair of Goombas to walk on. They hide in the corner before they can be spotted and stand directly behind them. Then, to make things more complicated, the door behind them opens, allowing more Goombas onboard and forcing them to quickly hide behind the first two. Meanwhile, after ordering Iggy and Spike executed, Koopa becomes too aggravated with how

everything is going south to listen to Lena. With that, Lena decides to merge the dimensions herself. By this point, the elevator has become completely filled with Goombas, and Mario and Luigi are stuck in the back. Unsure what to do, Luigi then hears the faint elevator music and gets an idea. He gently grabs the Goomba in front of him and starts moving him back and forth until he starts dancing on his own. He then does the same for the Goomba next to him, and another, until the others begin to

dance as well. Meanwhile, in her room, Daisy is visited by Goomba Toad, who brings her some food. Not finding it all that appetizing, and being a vegetarian, she asks him to bring her some steamed vegetables. Lena then enters the room and Toad quickly exits upon being told to leave. Daisy asks Lena if she will help her escape, since she doesn't want her there anyway, and Lena agrees... then puts her in a choke-hold and attempts to stab her with a small knife. Having befriended her, Yoshi struggles

against his chain and then uses his long tongue to grab Lena's leg and pull her to the floor. He drags her over to him and begins biting her foot, while Daisy makes a break for it. Lena, however, stabs Yoshi in the side and leaves as well, while Daisy runs down the hallway as the alarm sounds.

Having reached the 63rd floor, Mario and Luigi climb out of the elevator through the roof, as all of the Goombas are now swaying back and forth and singing to themselves. They even start dancing with each other, when the door opens on their leader, who yells at them and forces them to march out of the elevator. Daisy, meanwhile, runs into Toad, with her plate of steamed vegetables, and she then runs down another hallway, only to come across Iggy and Spike in the clutches of some more Goombas. They beg her for help, while Toad

follows her into the hallway. She tries to slip by him, only for the other Goombas to blast their flamethrowers, igniting Toad's uniform. Daisy runs, grabs a nearby fire extinguisher, and hits Toad with it, while Iggy and Spike manage to escape their captors. The three of them run down the hall, as Iggy and Spike proclaim themselves to be her loyal supporters and that they've been with her father since his demise. While the other Goombas attempt to find them through the thick smoke, Iggy and Spike take Daisy to the fungal

mass that was once her father in De-Vo Chamber 4. They then leave the two of them alone. Back with Mario and Luigi, they're now faced with a deep, fungus-covered elevator shaft. Though Mario is afraid of heights, Luigi, again having a feeling, decides to jump across, despite Mario's horror at the idea. When he runs and jumps, Mario covers his eyes with his hands and the rim of his cap... then looks to see that Luigi isn't plummeting to his death. Instead, he's apparently floating in midair.

He encourages Mario to have faith and jump, and after some coaxing, he does jump... but right before he does, Luigi realizes his belt is actually snagged onto a hook. He tries to warn Mario but he goes and jumps, only to fall down the shaft. Fortunately for him, a section of fungus expands below him. He jumps back up from it like a trampoline and tries to grab Luigi's hands, but he's too busy covering his eyes, thinking Mario's done for. Mario bounces back up and, this time, Luigi grabs his

brother's hands. Once they've settled down, Luigi prepares to swing Mario over to a ledge. Yoshi finds his way into the chamber where Daisy is and she removes the knife from his side, as well as the chain from his neck. He then nudges an object akin to a handgun hanging from a podium and monitor, but when Daisy takes it and looks at the monitor, she finds it's the tower's communication system, and interfaces with it by pointing and "shooting." She manages to access the security cameras and uses the intercom system to try to contact Mario and Luigi.

At that moment, the brothers are trying to get themselves onto a platform. After hearing her voice, they manage to swing onto the ledge and Mario unhooks Luigi. Daisy contacts them again and tells them which chamber she's in; however, Koopa is aware of this as well. Mario and Luigi enter a ventilation tunnel, which is now freezing cold from their sabotage. Luigi sees a nearby mushroom twirling and believes the fungus is trying to communicate with them. Again, Mario doesn't believe it and gets him to stop loitering.

They knock their way out of the system, land in one of the tower's hallways, and follow the sound of Daisy's voice to her location. Koopa, meanwhile, realizes that Lena has turned on him when he's told that she ordered the troops deployed. He orders her arrested, while Mario and Luigi are introduced to Daisy's father. Daisy, in turn, tells Mario that Daniella was captured and points him in the right direction. After he leaves, Daisy and Luigi attempt to follow, only to be captured by Koopa and a group of Goombas, the

former declaring that the invasion is about to begin. Elsewhere, Lena attempts to escape the city, only for the police to trap her in a room, subdue her, and retrieve the rock. Mario finds the room where Daniella and the other girls are being held captive. With a Goomba patrolling inside, he makes his way up onto the scaffolding above the room and quietly gets Daniella's attention. He motions for her to inform the other girls but to be quiet about it. But when Daniella tells one of them,

she, naturally, gets excited and loudly shouts Mario's name, prompting the other girls to do the same. With no other recourse, he jumps and grabs onto the overhanging light's cord, as the Goomba fires his flamethrower at him. Dodging his blasts, he swings at him and knocks him over a bunk. Mario lands and then has the girls grab the bunk's mattress and drag it over to the large vent leading into the ventilation system. He begins unscrewing the lid with his wrench, intending for them to go for a little ride to escape. Meanwhile, Koopa is given the rock and prepares to deploy the Goombas, many of whom are dancing elsewhere in the tower. He also asks about his pizza.

A bunch of flamethrower-wielding Goombas break down the door of the girls' room, only to find it empty, and the lid to the ventilation system open. The sound of Mario and the girls screaming can be hard as they slide on the mattress through the pipe. Three of the Goombas follow suit, using the ventilation lid, and laugh stupidly in excitement. They quickly catch up to Mario and the girls, as they twist and turn in the tunnel, and are almost on top of them. Mario and the girls duck to avoid some icicles hanging down in their path; the

Goombas aren't so lucky, as the one in the back gets knocked off the panel. Mario laughs at this, while the two remaining Goombas shake it off and continue the chase. Mario then takes out a wrench and sticks it upright in a small hole in the floor as they fly by it. The Goombas head right for it, one of them yelling at the top of his lungs, and they hit it and are upturned and flung down on the floor ahead (okay, I'll admit it; I did burst out laughing when I saw that during the re-watch). Mario loudly

proclaims, "Gotcha!", and he and the girls celebrate, only to start yelling when they see they're heading towards the end of the pipe. Behind them, one of the Goombas is actually using the other as a makeshift sled, followed by some others. Koopa and his prisoners emerge inside the Thwomp store and he tells his troops to prepare the De-Vo guns, when Mario and the girls crash through the tunnel's icicle-covered opening (the Goombas stop short right at the edge), fly through

the air above the heart of Dinohattan, causing a guy on a bicycle to become distracted and crash into a food vendor cart, and come down and skid right at Koopa and the others. They send the Goombas crashing through the glass of the store display behind them, freeing Luigi and Daisy. (I kind of wonder if this whole sequence was meant as a reference to the flying carpet from Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!).

Luigi and Daisy rush to see if Mario and the girls are okay and the brothers embrace, only to turn around and see that Koopa has a flamethrower trained on them. He attempts to have a villainous monologue but is interrupted by someone over his walkie-talkie, first to tell him that his pizza has arrived and then that the Goombas are dancing again. As he goes on, Luigi surreptitiously takes a Stomper charge off the ground and slips it to Mario. He quickly grabs one boot from the store behind him, charges it, and sends it at Koopa,

knocking him over the side and into a hanging cement mixer. Mario has Luigi grab him another Stomper and fires it at a Goomba who comes at him. The Goomba falls back and hits another one, who's flailing around with a boot on his head, and he knocks over a popcorn-like machine that's full of frogs. Koopa pops up in the mixer and shoots a fireball at them, forcing Mario to duck. His gun malfunctions and, while he tries to get it to work, Mario gives Luigi his tool-belt so he can free himself of the handcuffs and Luigi, in turn, gives

him his tools. He also tells him, "Trust the fungus," and Mario rips loose a section of hanging fungus to use it as a rope. Koopa manages to shot another fireball, which hits the Stomper display in the store, when Mario swings at him and grabs onto the cement mixer's underside, whacking his face and momentarily knocking himself senseless. Koopa starts blasting flames around the bottom of the mixer, trying to get at Mario, when he climbs up behind him and knocks him in the back of the

head. This causes him to drop the rock, which he's holding in his mouth, and Lena, who's been making her way to the spot along a walkway, reaches for it and catches it. The handrail gives way and she falls into a transformer, shocking the crap out of her and making her hair stand on in, but it doesn't deter her. Unaware of this, Koopa searches for the rock in the mixer. Mario, at the same time, removes one of his shoelaces and, getting Koopa's attention, holds it as though he has the rock in the palm of his hand and

the lace is its string. Taunting him, he ducks back down, as Koopa, again, tries to blast him. Lena, meanwhile, runs off to the meteorite. Luigi, Daisy, and the girls chase after her (I like how the girls question who Luigi is and he answers, "Luigi Mario! What, you got a problem with that?", as if commenting on how everyone wants to be Mario in the games), while Mario lets go of the mixer and lands on the street. He's nearly hit by a taxi, which has a skeleton on its fender, and has to dodge other cars, as Koopa hops down and continues the chase.

Having reached the meteorite, Lena attempts to put the rock in. Luigi, Daisy, and the others girls arrive and the former two prepare to send the others back through the dimensional rift. Back in Dinohattan, Mario and Koopa approach each other from across a walkway, when Mario pulls a Bob-Omb out of Luigi's pack. The sight of it sends the citizens running, and even Koopa is clearly shaken by it. Seeing how serious it is, Mario winds the Bob-Omb up, sets it down, and it starts walking towards Koopa, as its fuse ignites. Koopa backs away, when

a piece of the walkway breaks beneath the Bob-Omb and it falls under a section of grating. Koopa exclaims, "Messed up again, mammal!", and as the Bob-Omb tumbles down through the fungus, Mario, again, holds out the "rock" and the two of them approach each other again, Mario hurling insults at Koopa. Elsewhere, the Bob-Omb reaches ground and resumes walking. At the meteorite, the girls make it back to their own dimension, as Lena manages to put the rock in its place. However, the

output of energy proves to be too much for her, as it flows through her and blasts her back into the wall, skeletonized. Luigi comments, "Man, she sure makes an expression," (ugh), while Daisy realizes that only she can withstand the power. She goes to remove the rock, only to find it jammed in and nearly impossible to move. She also has to yank Luigi through the field of energy to join her. Back in the city, Koopa reaches Mario, who acts like he's going to drop the rock over the side of the

walkway. He goes for his hand, when his gun's flame goes out and he attempts to reignite it. Suddenly, Mario begins to disintegrate, as does Koopa, who realizes that the dimensions are merging. He laughs evilly and the two of them disappear completely, while Luigi tries to use his tools to remove the rock piece.

Over in the other dimension, those at the Scapelli construction site watch as the World Trade Center is replaced by Koopa's version. Mario and Koopa, as well as some Goombas, materialize as well. Koopa is ecstatic that he's there, proclaiming, "It's Brooklyn! My world!" He takes a De-Vo gun from a Goomba and fires at Mario. He dodges and Koopa instead hits Scapelli, devolving him into a primate. Koopa is pleased with himself, while Mario is shocked, and the nearby crowd starts laughing. One of Scapelli's goons picks him

up, also shocked at what's become of his boss. Koopa turns the De-Vo gun on Mario, but Mario grabs a mushroom, again trusting the fungus. When the De-Vo gun hits the mushroom, it balloons in size, blocking the ray. Mario then flings it at Koopa, knocking the gun out of his hands. Luigi and Daisy manage to pry the rock free from the meteorite, deactivating the merge, and causing everyone to return to Dinohattan. (This is what I mean about how the movie no longer following its own rules. Why did only Mario, Koopa, some

Goombas, and Koopa's World Trade Center merge into the other world, instead of the entire city and its citizens?) There, a driver sees the still walking Bob-Omb in the road ahead of him and hits the brake before he runs over it. Daisy and Luigi return to the city, only to run into Toad, who gives them a pair of De-Vo guns of their own; elsewhere, the Bob-Omb starts walking up the side of a wall. Once they've returned, Koopa orders his Goombas to blast Mario, but nearby, Toad plays a tune on his

harmonica that gets them dancing. Irritated, Koopa takes his flamethrower back from the one in the front and punches him, causing him to fall back and knock all of them over like dominoes. Luigi runs to rejoin his brother, when Bertha tosses him a pair of Stompers. Luigi uses them to reach Mario, while Koopa blasts at him with his flamethrower. He misses him, blowing up several signs, including a campaign poster with an image of him kissing a baby.

The Mario Brothers blast Koopa with the two De-Vo guns, regressing him backwards towards the Tyrannosaurus Rex he evolved from. Suddenly, the Bob-Omb stops on the section of grating beneath him and explodes, sending him flying through the air and landing back in the cement mixer. Mario and Luigi approach it cautiously, when Koopa, now devolved into a monstrous form, pops up and snarls at them. They then blast him again, devolving him further into a Tyrannosaurus Rex and finally into primordial slime, which leaks

down and spills all over the road below. With Koopa now thoroughly defeated, the citizens of Dinohattan begin cheering the Mario Brothers. They wave back at them, use Luigi's Stompers to reach the walkway across from them, and are rejoined by Daisy. The whole city starts celebrating, including the Goombas, and taking down all of Koopa's iconography, while elsewhere, the king is restored to his true form (again, this makes no sense in the context of the movie's 

mythology; why did Koopa's defeat undo the king devolution?). Coughing up some fungus (which was Lance Henriksen's idea, from what I've heard), he intones, "I'm back! Love those plumbers." With that, Mario, Luigi, and Daisy head back to the entrance and Daisy uses the rock to reopen the portal between the dimensions. Telling Luigi that she can't return just yet, until she finds out who she is, he and Daisy kiss and then he, very reluctantly, follows Mario back through the portal. Yoshi waves goodbye to them as they go, and once they've gone, Toad joins them and, in his guttural voice, says, "Bye."

Three weeks later, at the Mario Brothers' apartment, Mario and Daniella are making dinner, while Luigi sees that, on Our Miraculous World, the paranormal investigation show he loves watching, their story is featured. The reporter tells of how they crossed a dimensional bridge, rescued the kidnapped girls, and saved the other world from Koopa's dictatorship. He goes on to say, "I'd call them the Super Mario Brothers," prompting Mario and Luigi to do their special handshake. That's when there's a knock on the door and their

visitor turns out to be none other than Daisy, wearing combat fatigues and wielding a flamethrower, saying, "You guys gotta come with me! I need your help!... You're never gonna believe this." Mario, without any hesitation, grabs his belt and says, "I believe it." Luigi, incredulous, asks, "You do?", and Mario chuckles and answers, "I believe." The film ends on a freeze-frame of Daisy smiling (as well as the question of what this new crisis is, which we're never going to get an answer

to, unless you read a webcomic sequel produced in 2013). Finally, there's a post-credits scene, which I never caught until I saw the movie on Disney Channel that one time, where two Asian men in suits are proposing, "A video game based on your many adventures." One of them asks, "What would you call it?" The camera pans over to show them talking to Iggy and Spike, who are dressed in different clothes and wearing hats. The former suggests, "Iggy's World," while the latter says, "The Indomitable Spike." And then, the both of them answer, "The Super Koopa Cousins."

The score was composed by the awesome Alan Silvestri, whom you can usually count on to deliver the goods. However, his music for Super Mario Bros. definitely doesn't rate among his best work, although it does have some memorable themes and leitmotifs here and there. The music that always comes to mind when I think about the movie is this really silly, slapstick, Keystone Cops-like theme for Mario and Luigi, which you first hear when they're rushing to their job and is played many times throughout the film. However, it's sometimes used when more heroic music would be more appropriate, like when they're hailed as heroes after defeating Koopa. There's also a lot of really exotic music to coincide with the other world, and a solemn violin for the scenes where Daisy's mother and lineage are mentioned. I also really like the music for the chase scenes, particularly for the tunnel one near the end, which makes that sequence even funnier. However, the music, on the whole, is kind of so-so, and it's a shame that Silvestri didn't adapt any of the music from the games into it. As for the soundtrack, the song I most remember is the goofy Walk the Dinosaur, which you hear at one point during the scene at the Boom-Boom Bar, as well as during the latter part of the ending credits. Also memorable is Love is the Drug, by Divinyls, which you first hear when they enter the Boom-Boom, and I Would Stop The World, by Charles and Eddie, when Mario attempts to get the rock away from Bertha; both songs add to the surreal nature of that sequence. The first part of the ending credits features the song Almost Unreal, by Roxette, which isn't that bad of a tune, I must say.

The cult following this movie has is one of the most devoted I've seen, to the point where they have an entire website dedicated to it: Super Mario Bros.: The Movie Archive. This place has cobbled together just about every piece of information you could possibly hope for, covering every facet of its production and legacy. A lot of videos on YouTube talking about the film, negatively or otherwise, have made good use of this site for their research and I, in turn, watched a lot of those videos to research this review. But not only is the site amazing for info on the movie, they also helped put together a restoration of its original cut before it

was extensively edited for theatrical release. Called the "Morton-Jankel Cut," this version, which was released on Internet Archive, is based around a VHS workprint and restores over twenty minutes of material. I planned to watch it in full for this review but, because of how utterly horrendous Internet Archive's buffering is, I instead watched what I could, sometimes needing to use it as a source when the others I was originally using were taken down, and gleaned the most significant parts of the restoration from other sources. Among them are a moment where, after losing another job to Scapelli, Mario and Luigi try to warn the restaurant

owner that Scapelli's men are trying to rip him, and Mario then confronts the men about their boss, saying the two of them grew up together; the removed scene where Koopa devolves a man because he sneezed, emphasizing his germaphoba; a moment with Koopa and Lena in the mud bath where he explains that he needs Daisy for the dimensional merger because only she can withstand the meteorite's force; a moment between the girls before Lena comes to fetch Daisy, and Daniella tries to follow after her, only to be stopped by a Goomba; a moment where Iggy and Spike disturb Koopa while he's talking with Daisy and he bangs their heads together and yells at them to go

after the Mario Brothers; more of Mario and Luigi arguing in the desert; a cringe-worthy rap Iggy and Spike perform at the Boom-Boom, as well as a look at some of those strippers the directors put in, complete with lizard tails; and a payoff to the running gag with Koopa's pizza, where it's delivered after he's reduced to primordial slime. Also, in putting the thing together, they removed the animated opening and replaced it with footage from the 1925 movie, The Lost World, and at the end of the movie, you hear a big, sweeping version of the Mario Brothers theme, which I thought was cool. All in all, I don't know if I would say it makes the movie better; it just clears up some things.

Love it or hate it, Super Mario Bros. is definitely unique, to say the least. It certainly makes for an interesting way to adapt a popular IP, taking a bright and colorful series of video games and going for a dark, icky, and just plain weird aesthetic. Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled against it, it does have more than its fair share of pros, like some great actors, particularly Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper, giving some great performances, despite the trying conditions they were working under; inspired production design and a well-done depiction of the weird the filmmakers created; good special effects, both on the practical and visual side; a freak flag that it's not at all afraid to wave; and its being more faithful to the games that you might think. But, at the same time, you can see the result of its very troubled production and constant script re-writes, especially in the third act, where the story starts falling apart; I still find it to be needlessly gross at points; I don't think the music score is that great, regardless of it being Alan Silvestri; and above all else, while there are some moments here and there that I do laugh at, I find the movie to be more awkward and bizarre than an exciting adventure-comedy, even when watching the extended version. Again, I get why it has such a devout cult following, and I can appreciate their enthusiasm for it, but it's just not for me and I doubt I'll ever watch it again after this.