Film Review: SUPER MARIO BROS. (1993, Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton)

Yoshi Eggs: 2.5 of 5?
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Bob Hoskins (THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY, MONA LISA, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT), John Leguizamo (ROMEO + JULIET, CARLITO'S WAY, ENCANTO), Dennis Hopper (BLUE VELVET, WATERWORLD, EASY RIDER), Samantha Mathis (BROKEN ARROW, PUMP UP THE VOLUME, AMERICAN PSYCHO), Fiona Shaw (MY LEFT FOOT, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, the HARRY POTTER saga), Fisher Stevens (MY SCIENCE PROJECT, HACKERS, SHORT CIRCUIT), Richard Edson (DO THE RIGHT THING, STRANGE DAYS), Lance Henriksen (ALIENS, HARD TARGET, NEAR DARK), Don Lake (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN, POLICE ACADEMY, BEST IN SHOW), Francesca P. Roberts (HARD TO KILL, INSIDE MOVES). Music by Alan Silvestri (BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE AVENGERS, MAC AND ME). Cinematography by Dean Semler (THE ROAD WARRIOR, APOCALYPTO, COCKTAIL, XXX, YOUNG GUNS). Edited by Mark Goldblatt (TERMINATOR 2, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, HALLOWEEN II, PREDATOR 2, BAD BOYS 2, XXX 2: STATE OF THE UNION).
Tag-line: "This ain't no game."
Best one-liner:  "Remember, trust the fungus!"

For this particular film––from the directors of MAX HEADROOM and many a "Rush" music video, and in which stars Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo allegedly drank themselves into a stupor between takes––I feel that my review is best delivered as a series of questions to which there are (likely?) no answers. As it were, a sober philosophical inquiry.

Why did they feel the need to invent an entirely new mythology for the Super Mario universe, one which involves a parallel dinosaur dimension caused by the extinction asteroid event and called "Dinohattan?"

Could there possibly be a more '90s tableau than a recumbent "Luigi" Leguizamo in acid-washed jeans, a sideways ballcap, a generic "flaming yin-yang" tee, and while playing with a Pin Art executive toy?

Is it now official canon that the Mario brothers are so called because their actual names are "Mario Mario" and "Luigi Mario?" Is it canon that they are half-brothers separated by twenty-two years of age? How did they manage to shoehorn in "Manhattan land developer villains" in a movie which takes place largely in the SF&F hellscape of "Dinohattan?"

Are all of the dinosaurs here because of Yoshi's popularity, or because of JURASSIC PARK's? How many dinosaur bones are under the Brooklyn Bridge anyway?

How strange is it that the "portal to another dimension" plot feels nothing like the SUPER MARIO BROS. games, or even anything like the formative "magic gateway" genre classics (ALICE IN WONDERLAND, WIZARD OF OZ, THE LION, THE WITCH, et al.), but in fact most resembles the Cannon Films/Kathy Ireland classic ALIEN IN L.A.?

Is it wrong that I like the sprawling, chaotic, teenage mutant "Albert Pyun"-itude of it all, and way more than I should? 

Here's a question I can answer: is it because the production designer is the Oscar-nominated David L. Snyder, who worked on BLADE RUNNER, DEMOLITION MAN, PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and BILL & TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY? Yes, yes it is.

Is it wrong that it feels so strange to see Samantha Mathis (the egg-hatched-and-raised-by-nuns Princess Daisy, here) in an early '90s movie without Christian Slater?

Do you think Slater/Mathis were more of an early '90s Tracy/Hepburn, or more of a Bartel/Woronov?

Do the creators of "Dinohattan" regret including the now-chilling image of a crumbling World Trade Center?

(The movie was released fewer than three months after the 1993 WTC bombing. See also: DOWN/THE SHAFT.)

Did the producers realize that one of their trendiest resources was not, in fact, Was (Not Was)' "Everybody Walk the Dinosaur," but having Sonic Youth's Richard Edson and Naked Angels Theater Company co-founder Fisher Stevens as rando Dinohattan henchmen?

Is the greatest moment of Fisher Stevens' life when he said "Sayonara, dicknose!" in MY SCIENCE PROJECT or was it his Grand Skateboard Entrance in HACKERS?

Was it a mistake to reimagine King Koopa as a "germaphobe Frank Booth" with weird Maggie Simpson cornrows and a bitchin' snakeskin jacket?

In which of his '90s villains does Dennis Hopper channel BLUE VELVET the hardest? Is it his work in WATERWORLD, SPEED, CHASERS, RED ROCK WEST, or SUPER MARIO BROS.? (Eh, I actually think it's SPEED.)

Who is "Lena" meant to be in the wider SUPER MARIO mythos? Does it matter when it's essentially the great Fiona Shaw playing, um, a live-action Disney villain?

Is the Yoshi puppet actually.... really impressive? I swear, it's one of the better puppet/animatronics of the CGI era and pretty much equal to anything in JURASSIC PARK. How 'bout that?

Why does the film take such a hard turn into a Terry Gilliam-influenced Kafka nightmare, complete with Rube Goldberg torture devices and Soviet gulag ambience?

Is it a "fun" gag when the Mario Brothers are nearly executed at a Lavrentiy Beria-style tribunal which resembles Goya's painting "The Third of May 1808?"

Is John Leguizamo even acting at this point, or has he surrendered to the existential horror of appearing in this film?

Is a tableau such as this what the kiddies are hoping for in their SUPER MARIO popcorn fare, an extrajudicial political prison to contain their favorite 16-bit heroes?

I mean, this would be at home in an Andrzej Żuławski film, or maybe an early Lars Trier joint, but...

 

maybe they've stumbled onto something good here, with this conceit of the "De-evolution" chamber––can finally the disparate worlds of MAX HEADROOM and IN THE PENAL COLONY co-exist? Do you receive a similar religious epiphany when you Devolve as you do when your crimes are carved onto your flesh with Kafka's Machine?

What was the impetus behind reimagining the "goombas"––tiny villainous mushrooms, in the game––as BEETLEJUICE-shrunken-headed dinosaur monsters?

Can Dennis Hopper explain it to us? (The answer? "Partially.")

Should the entire movie instead have been refashioned to center on Francesca P. Roberts' character, "Bertha," who has rocket boots and the best fashion sense in the film (courtesy of THE MANDALORIAN and NEAR DARK's costume designer Joseph A. Porro)? (Undoubtedly, the answer to this one is, "yes.") 

Why does the sequence of the movie which seems most directly based on a video game––featuring Bob Hoskins dodging traffic––

 take its inspiration not from SUPER MARIO BROS., but from the arcade classic FROGGER?

Why does the final showdown with Dennis Hopper/King Koopa center entirely around gunplay, when guns and first-person-shooting are have never been associated with the sort of games released under the SUPER MARIO umbrella?

 

And are you going to tell me that, ackshually it's kosher because those are SNES "Super Scope" guns, which technically were a Nintendo product compatible with exactly one game in the SUPER MARIO-verse, the mostly forgotten YOSHI'S SAFARI (1993), which, again, represents only one of forty-nine (!) MARIO-adjacent titles and is only representative of the series at large if you are a big ol' nerdy nerd?

So why does Lance muthafuckin' Henriksen play King Reznor, who, now that Dennis Hopper has been defeated, is no longer a giant fungus installation piece, and... er... who is King Reznor anyway? Trent's dad?

Is a fitting finale to have Lance Henriksen sit up in a golden throne and exclaim, "I'm back!––I love those plumbers!"

Perhaps it is.  

Then there is a post-credits scene which tries to imagine that this film is simply the ur-text from which Japanese game developers adapted the games. Okay!

What's the worst thing Bob Hoskins ever did? Wait... I'm being told we have an answer for this one!

"The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Brothers. It was a fuckin' nightmare. The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent. After so many weeks their own agent told them to get off the set! Fuckin' nightmare. Fuckin' idiots."

–Bob Hoskins, as told to The Guardian in 2007

Well, there ya have it folks. SUPER MARIO BROS. 

To quote this film's version of "May the Force Be With You," I'll leave you with this benediction: "Trust the Fungus."

Only now does it occur to me... CHASERS (1994)

Only now does it occur to me... that Dennis Hopper slides a nice little homage to his friend and collaborator David Lynch in his "THE LAST DETAIL-reimagined-as-a-90s-comedy" road movie, CHASERS. The homage in question is an extended shot of a logging truck, just like in TWIN PEAKS.

That's not all: this thing is packed with Lynch collaborators, including BLUE VELVET and DUNE's Dean Stockwell as a car dealership owner:

"Here's to your fuck, Frank!"

WILD AT HEART's Crispin Glover as a put-upon sailor who's been pushed around for too long:

"I'm making my lunch!"

and LOST HIGHWAY's Gary Busey as a marine who clearly is improvising all of his dialogue:



Hopper himself appears as a lingerie salesman with a fake-Karl Malden nose, for some reason:


"Heineken? Fuck that shit!"

Anyway, what we have here is an episodic, charmingly rambling, critically maligned road movie that is better than I expected it to be. Tom Berenger, doing kind of a whisky-ravaged Tom Waits/BEETLEJUICE voice is a hardboiled career member of Shore Patrol, transporting Navy prisoners across the country.

William McNamara (a likable man-génue who deserved a better career––you may have seen him in SURVIVING THE GAME, DREAM A LITTLE DREAM, EXTREME JUSTICE, or Argento's OPERA) plays a young sailor on his last day before discharge. 

 

He's enlisted to help Berenger out with a prisoner transport––though due to a clerical mix-up, the prisoner is unexpectedly a woman.

Played by Erica Eleniak (former BAYWATCH cast member, UNDER SIEGE cake-jumper, and co-star of BETRAYAL and BORDELLO OF BLOOD), she actually brings pathos and humor to a role that could have easily been a caricature. As the unlikely trio crosses the country and bonds with one another (again, THE LAST DETAIL is the point of origin/departure), we meet the whole host of character actors I have already detailed, as well as zany waitress Marilu Henner (TAXI, PERFECT):

and creepy-ass trucker Frederic Forrest (APOCALYPSE NOW, FALLING DOWN):

Born to play a creepy trucker

In the end, CHASERS was Dennis Hopper's final feature as a director, and it's a weird, pleasant relic of the "EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS" era, worth a look for character actor and Americana aficionados. I can probably sum it up best in guessing that Wim Wenders probably loves the shit out of this movie.

Only now does it occur to me... WATERWORLD (1995)

Only now does it occur to me... that the 1990s were all about taking existing stories and setting them on a boat. 

First, we got UNDER SIEGE. You cannot dispute that it's DIE HARD on a boat. That's the entire elevator pitch.

SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL? SPEED on a boat, obviously. Easy.

CAPTAIN RON?... is clearly WHAT ABOUT BOB on a boat. Think about it.

WHITE SQUALL? Eh, DEAD POETS SOCIETY on a boat.

DOWN PERISCOPE? Pretty much KELLY'S HEROES on a boat.

DEEP RISING? Definitely FROM DUSK TILL DAWN on a boat (or SCARECROWS works, too).

CRIMSON TIDE? Sorta FAIL SAFE/DR. STRANGELOVE on a boat. (Yeah, submarine, whatever.)

NAVY SEALS, with Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn? TOP GUN on a boat. (With fewer volleyball and even more propaganda.)

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER? I'm gonna make the argument that it's your classic intelligence game/defector/TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY story, mainly so I can remind you that the rhyme which gives John le Carre's novel its title originally says "sailor" instead of "spy," so why don't you go think about that for a minute as you ponder all these 90s boats (and submarines, too, I guess).

CABIN BOY? This one's a little tougher. There's a little DON QUIXOTE, PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, and MONTY PYTHON in there. Nevertheless, you must admit that it takes place on a boat.

TITANIC? Could go a lot of ways here, from WUTHERING HEIGHTS to GONE WITH THE WIND to AIRPORT or whatever, but as the highest-grossing movie of the 1990s, there's definitely the sense that it helps define the 90s as a boat-related decade.

Which brings us to WATERWORLD. Which is... MAD MAX: THE ROAD WARRIOR on a boat!

It takes FISHTAR-sized balls to open your summer blockbuster with Kevin Costner drinking his own pee. This is literally the first thing we see, after a Waterworlded version of the Universal logo.

This, and the rest of WATERWORLD, is George Miller-infused, post-apocalyptic madness, chock full of oil and gasoline-seeking weirdos, Terry Gilliam/Karel Zeman flying machines, and costumes made out of trash and (pirate) bondage gear. (Big shoutout to costumer John Bloomfield, who also did CONAN THE BARBARIAN and THE MUMMY '99, among others.)

 

Despite the troubled production and its awful "KEVIN'S GATE" reputation, WATERWORLD, when you get down to it, is actually pretty enjoyable. It's certainly no worse than typical, semi-competent 90s popcorn fare like INDEPENDENCE DAY or TWISTER or SPEED. Speaking of SPEED: Dennis Hopper is in the house, and he's having a blast.

As "The Deacon," the one-eyed barbarian king of "The Smokers," his only character traits are that he's sadistic, insane, and loves smoking. Here he is, tossing handfuls of cigarettes at a parade like they're candy:

He says things like "I swear to Poseidon" and "Excuuuuuuse me!" and even tries to get little children hooked on tobacco with the promise of Sharpie Highlighters.

He gives it just the right amount of "crazy-eye to comedy" ratio, never going full-Busey (Gary Busey––along with Jack Nicholson, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Laurence Fishburne were also up for the role.)

There's a lot going on here, from a generic James Newton Howard Score to Costner having gills behind his ears and webbed feet, but they manage to make room for Kim Coates playing a weird Irishman rapist with costume elements made from the infamous, fish-choking six-pack rings.

So that's something. Costner even allows a female lead to share the screen with him on occasion, and it's Jeanne Tripplehorn, whose name often appears in the same sentence as the words "deserves better."

She endured literal brushes with death, jellyfish stings, and being stuck on a boat with Kevin Costner. Of the experience, she said “I was feeling a little like Patty Hearst. I was just completely brainwashed by my captors and I was just out there trying to get through it.” Holy shit, WATERWORLD! I guess it's all worth it cause she gets this nice n' corny SUPERMAN/"Can You Read My Mind?" sequence where Costner uses his webbed feet to swim her down to the bottom of the ocean to take a magical look at the ruined remnants of Indianapolis or wherever.

Anyway. MAD MAX on a boat!