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... HAIL, CAESAR! (2016)

Only now does it occur to me... that the Coen Brothers must be closet HIGHLANDER fans. Why else would they cast Clancy "The Kurgan" Brown:

and Christopher "Connor 'The Highlander' MacLeod" Lambert:

in the same film? (aside from the fact that they're both great, and wield a mean broadsword).  With Sean Connery retired, I suppose my only complaint is that Michael Ironside didn't make the cut.

Regardless, this film does not in fact revolve around HIGHLANDER sequel/prequel fan-fictions, though from the standpoint of a character-actor fan, it has much to offer. Amid the pastiche of Busby Berkeley and Vincente Minnelli-style musical numbers, there are wonderful bits by Robert Picardo as a finicky, test audience rabbi:

Fisher Stevens (who really knows how to make an entrance) as a furtive, blacklisted screenwriter:

Tilda Swinton in dual roles as twin-sister gossip columnists:

and Dolph Lundgren as the silhouette of a Russian submarine captain:

(since it's the 1950s,  I can't tell if he's Ivan Drago's father, or the father of his henchman from A VIEW TO A KILL). 

Sure, it's no BARTON FINK, but I enjoyed it.

Film Review: BOB ROBERTS (1992, Tim Robbins)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 102 minutes.
Tag-line: "Vote first. Ask questions later."
Notable Cast or Crew:  Tim Robbins (THE PLAYER, TAPEHEADS), Giancarlo Esposito (DO THE RIGHT THING, THE USUAL SUSPECTS), Alan Rickman (DIE HARD, MICHAEL COLLINS),  Ray Wise (TWIN PEAKS, SWAMP THING), Gore Vidal (GATTACA, MYRA BRECKINRIDGE), Harry Lennix (TITUS, DOLLHOUSE), Tom Atkins (THE FOG, HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), David Strathairn (THE RIVER WILD, SNEAKERS), James Spader (TUFF TURF, Pamela Reed (TANNER '88, THE RIGHT STUFF), Helen Hunt (TRANCERS, PROJECT X, TWISTER), Peter Gallagher (THE UNDERNEATH, MALICE, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE), Lynne Thigpen (WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO, SHAFT '00), Jack Black (THE NEVERENDING STORY III, DEMOLITION MAN), Susan Sarandon (THE HUNGER, THELMA & LOUISE), Fred Ward (REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES, THE PLAYER), Fisher Stevens (SHORT CIRCUIT, MY SCIENCE PROJECT), Bob Balaban (CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, MOONRISE KINGDOM), John Cusack (TAPEHEADS, THE GRIFTERS), Jeremy Piven (DR. JEKYLL & MS. HYDE, THE PLAYER).  Cinematography by Jean Lépine (THE PLAYER, TANNER '88).
Best One-liner: "The times they are a-changin' back!"

I'll begin this review with a quote from IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE, a 1935 novel novel by Sinclair Lewis, which imagines America's first Fascist president. He's a fellow by the name of "Buzz Windrip," and his coronation takes place at a convention in Cleveland. I'll let Lewis describe him for you:

"[Buzz] was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his 'ideas' almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill. 

...Aside from his dramatic glory, Buzz Windrip was a Professional Common Man. Oh, he was common enough.  He had every prejudice and aspiration of every American Common Man. ...But he was the Common Man twenty-times-magnified by his oratory, so that while the other Commoners could understand his every purpose, which was exactly the same as their own, they saw him towering above them, and they raised hands to him in worship."

BOB ROBERTS––Tim Robbins' equally prescient 1992 political mockumentary––essentially picks up where Sinclair Lewis left off. It tells the story of a populist Pennsylvanian singer, Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins),

who is running for the U.S. Senate against a stereotypically intellectual incumbent (Gore Vidal).

Apparently Gore Vidal improvised much of his dialogue by reciting his own political positions.

Equally inspired by the panoramic satire of Robert Altman (with whom Robbins collaborated three times) and the comedic sensibilities of THIS IS SPINAL TAP, Robbins creates one of the more perceptive, mean-spirited, and amusing political films of our time. ...And, at the risk of quoting Richard Nixon, we need it "now more than ever."
 
This movie had been on my to-see list for some time, and when I read J.D. at Radiator Heaven's wonderful take on it this March, I knew I had to track it down.

A breezy corporate "folk" singer with the trappings of Bob Dylan and the lyrics of Jordan Belfort,

Bob Roberts traffics in yuppie syllogisms, evangelical pandering, white pride dog-whistling, and priggish sanctimony. The Sixties' pendulum has swung back; Bob (semi-sincerely?) considers himself a rebel patriot, and his campaign possesses all the civil apparatus of a social revolution, but he's fighting against ideals like tolerance, enlightenment, and general civility. This brash refutation of Sixties' youth movements feels like the natural outgrowth of the contemporary corporate "nonconformists" who brought us the profundity of a Nike ad using The Beatles' "Revolution" in 1988.

The lyrics of Bob's songs are brilliant in the way the lyrics in THIS IS SPINAL TAP are brilliant––what they're mocking (hair metal and nativist movements, respectively) already exists on such a plane of absurdity that it's nearly indistinguishable from the genuine article. Whether he's firing broadsides at the "nation of complainers" addicted to entitlement culture:

"Like this: / It's society's fault I don't have a job / It's society's fault I'm a slob / I'm a drunk, I don't have a brain / Give me a pamplet while I complain / Hey pal you're living in the land of the free / no one's gonna hand you opportunity..."

engaging in colonial cosplay:


or singing the dangers of letting "Godless men" in past our walls, who'll "take the jobs of the decent ones":




we've sort of moved beyond satire, and into "reenactment," a mirror reflection of the worst angels of our nature (with the fringe fantasies of 1992 existing in the limelight of 2016).

Tim Robbins perfectly inhabits the role of the neighborly fanatic, the apple-pie extremist; excellent at glad-handing, even as he lines you up against the wall. Certainly every politician carries a bit of the "poseur" about them, but the cold-blooded strain that flows through Bob Roberts is chilling, and all too real. The rest of the cast is wonderful, and fully in tune with the grotesque tendencies of the American political system––it's a veritable playground for character actors and glorified cameos, like:

Alan Rickman, as Bob's campaign chairman (and Oliver North stand-in), whose performance is filled with serpentine acting choices that hint at hidden menace:



Ray Wise as Bob's campaign manager, who's able to play off of Rickman's terrifying energy with one of the best glossy, soulless smiles in film history:

It's a veritable 'soulless smile' showdown.

Tom Atkins as Bob's jovial/oddly intimidating personal physician:


Giancarlo Esposito as an obsessive progressive journalist, who could very well be a character from an Oliver Stone film:


Jack Black as an unbalanced teen (you know the kind, the kid who carves swastikas into desks and burns you with paper clips) who finds in Bob Roberts what TAXI DRIVER's Travis Bickle could only dream he'd get out of the Palatine campaign:


Bob Balaban as a thinly-veiled version of Lorne Michaels (during a controversial Bob Roberts television appearance, with SNL transformed into "CUTTING EDGE LIVE") and John Cusack as a politically outspoken actor:


Peter Gallagher, Helen Hunt,  Lynne Thigpen, James Spader,

Fisher Stevens,

Susan Sarandon & Fred Ward,

and Pamela Reed as newscasters.

Pamela Reed, star of Robert Altman's political mockumentary HBO miniseries TANNER '88. Clearly, the Gary Trudeau-penned series was a major influence on BOB ROBERTS (though it is considerably less mean-spirited), and Robbins even hired the same cinematographer, Jean Lépine.

Essentially, Bob Roberts' candidacy begins as a joke, builds momentum,

balloons to a size that the responsibly rational can no longer ignore,



Roberts' goons rough up the protesters...

and ends in a dark, dark place––far darker than most satirical comedy dares to go. As usual, the true horror is in the way these Fascist tendencies mushroom and flourish among the mob, like a night-flowering vine, or at least like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE:


Five stars.

––Sean Gill