Mario, Luigi, and Peach Advance to Their Dullest Level Yet
DIRECTORS: AARON HORVATH AND MICHAEL JELENIC/CO-DIRECTORS: PIERRE LEDUC AND FABIEN POLACK/2026
If you’re over the age of six, you’ll have a better time playing any version of Super Mario than watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
To be fair, as someone over the age of 6 who has not played a Nintendo game for 20 years, I am not the target audience. Those with more affection for Mario (Chris Pratt), Luigi (Charlie Day), and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) may be more invested in this 90-minute attempt at adventure. This sequel introduces Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson), who uses her cosmic powers to protect her star children—yes, literal stars—until she’s captured by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) The stars recruit Peach and Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) to find their mother while Mario, Luigi, and Yoshi (Donald Glover, doing his best Jar Jar Binks impression) are left in charge of the Mushroom Kingdom. But with Bowser (Jack Black) at their side, we know it’s only a matter of time until Bowser Jr. returns to rescue his father.
Like 2023’s smash hit Super Mario Bros. Movie, Galaxy is another Easter egg hunt for Mario Kart iconography. Mario, Luigi, et al. are jumping from one themed planet to another, collecting Mystery Boxes, breaking bricks, and avoiding Goombas along the way. And like the last film, it feels like video game walkthrough on YouTube, filling the gaps with basic Star Wars story beats. Though we are without a controller, following the mechanics, power-ups, and sound effects of this universe depends on our having played it before. This does prevent an overload of expository dialogue (and keeps the runtime down to 98 minutes), but it also contributes to the lack of narrative. On a Nintendo Switch, players have random chances at bonuses as they race through each level, providing dopamine hits to keep them engaged. But recreating that aleatory feeling in a movie means our heroes save the day through convenient coincidence. The kids might love the bit with Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, and a T-Rex (which roars just like a T-Rex in a Universal’s other behemoth franchise, Jurassic World), but a racing video game level doesn’t require the storytelling complexity that sustains a feature film or even a 22-minute sitcom episode. These characters have been slapped on our movie screens with the same level of creativity as those who slap a Mario sticker on their water bottle.
Galaxy also fails to recreate the one bit of magic the 2023 movie had: the secret weapon who is Jack Black. Even non-Nintendo fans were so charmed by his “Peaches” ballad that giving him another song seems like it would be a gimme for a franchise built on fan service. Though the Bowsers are the only characters with any development, Black somehow gets less time to shine than he did last time. No one else in this talented cast fares any better playing their anthropomorphized plot devices—most recite emotionless lingo in their normal voices at louder decibels. I joked in my Wicked: For Good review that Colman Domingo recorded his Cowardly Lion lines while on a lunch break from The Running Man, and now I’m wondering if Glen Powell (squeezing in his best start to a Han Solo impression) took a long lunch the same day. If rumor spread that Powell, Larson, Glover, Luis Guzmán, and Issa Rae recorded their dialogue in the last week, I’d believe it. With barely a plot, barely an innovation, and barely a joke, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is barely an experience.