The Super Mario Bros. Movie

 (Notice the THE at the front; this is THE Mario Bros movie. There's clearly never been another.)

 This one is clearly not for me. I'm not a Nintendo Fan, and I'm not ten, and those are the only surfaces that I could conceivably hold on to in a product that has had any possible edges so sanded down that all that's left is a very shiny, featureless series of surfaces. Other than Nintendo's very evocative and cute character/monster designs from the games, I found it more than a little soulless.

Best thing in the movie by a country mile, and one of the very few jokes that works.

 Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) are a pair of Brooklyn Plumbers who get transported into a magical world when they enter a green pipe. This world is in the process of getting conquered by a big turtle dragon thing (Jack Black), and there's a plucky princess (Anya Taylor-Joy) who's trying to protect her kingdom of ineffective fungus people by entering into an alliance with the driving-enthusiast ape people of a few kingdoms over.

 It's a generic, arbitrary nothingburger of a plot; The Donkey Kong army, for example, a major plot point throughout the second act, is casually cast aside, rendered meaningless. The shoddy scripting is all the more infuriating because formula insists it needs to have 'relatable human emotions (tm)'. So you have to sit through the most generic possible kiddie-movie-subplot about Mario proving himself and some other piss-poor twaddle that's boring for the kids, and boring *and* insultingly dumb for older kids. Who could possibly give even the most negligible of fucks about that sort of thing? At least the script allows for a lot of action at a manic clip, which is the film's sole justification aside from being a reference-dispensing machine for game console fans.

 In that respect, it's... fine. More than fine in the Nintendo-referencing department: it throws all manner of franchise properties, easter eggs and blink-and-you'll-miss-'em cameos pulled from Nintendo's five decades of video game history. But I'm immune to that- I like some of the games, but I grew up playing Gianna Sisters, not this film's source material. I didn't have any Ninty console until SNES emulation came along.
 So I'm left with the adventure side of things to appreciate, and it's a little underwhelming; every now and then there's a fun action beat, or a nice-looking shot (I'm partial to the bit where the ocean is lit from below from the shards of a broken rainbow.) But taken as a whole it's loud, garish, and it doesn't have a single thing of interest to say, no real artistic reason to exist for non-Nintendo-heads.
 Oh well, at least it moves quickly enough that it doesn't quite get to be boring.

 The directors, Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, are behind Teen Titans Go! - a series (and a couple movies) that can be very funny, inventive, and most of all, subversive; So it's a shame to see them so completely neutered here, unable to throw a single Dennis Hopper reference or anything that could be viewed as anything other than a complete orgasmic bliss at the prospect to be playing in Nintendo's toybox. Their energy sometimes shows through, but none of their humour or wit.
 I don't think this being an Illumination joint - purveyors of some of the safest, least interesting big animated movies out there - helped at all. Nor does it help to have the mandate to be a good babysitter movie for very, very young kids (notice the presence of so many 'cheerleader' characters, telling kids how fun and exciting what they're seeing is at several points in the movie.)

  It's an impressively expensive- and occasionally nice-looking movie; This is not to say it's interesting aesthetically, but it is elaborate and well made. The soundtrack is not really memorable, with frequent very obvious needle drops taken from an over-used roster of songs even seven-year-olds will be familiar with, along with tons of variations from the games' tunes.  

 I didn't hate the film - things keep switching up often enough to maintain some interest, and the production values are so huge that it'd be impossible for it not to luck into an interesting-looking bit on occasion. But slotted into what's been a pretty amazing couple of decades for kid's entertainment? It rings really, really hollow.

Spoilers! How about that ending? Bowser's castle squashes half of Brooklyn without a warning. I asked my son to estimate how many people were killed in their sleep in that scene, and his answer was "twenty k?".
 I wonder if all the people who complain about the third act in Superman Returns were outraged by it. I suspect their answer would be the same one for when you criticize this movie's vacuity: "It's a kid's movie, innit?"

 I leave you with the words of Mario Creator Shigeru Miyamoto, as quoted in wikipedia while explaining why this movie came to be:

 "our content business would be able to develop even further if we were able to combine our long-beloved software with that of video assets, and utilize them together for extended periods"