Super Mario Bros. (film)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Breakaway Pop Hit: Featuring the hit single "Almost Unreal" by Roxette.
  • Brick Joke: Attempted pretty clumsily. It starts with King Koopa ordering a pizza about halfway through the movie. Later, as he's about to prepare his Goomba army, he wonders what's taking his pizza so long. Finally, as he has cornered the Mario brothers in the climax, he gets a phone call from the pizza joint that his pizza has arrived.
  • Complete Monster: Surprisingly enough, Koopa himself isn't this; that would be Lena, who doesn't give one shit about the safety of her own dimension in her zeal to merge it with Earth, and thus unlike Koopa she can't claim to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Cult Classic: For any fan of the Mario series, this is a must-see. The Super Mario Bros. The Movie Archive is a thriving fan community devoted to the movie that's even had exclusive interviews with members of the cast and crew.
  • Ear Worm:
    • "Somewhere My Love", the song Mario and Luigi trick the Goombas into dancing to... La, la, LA LA....
    • "Walk the Dinosaur".
  • Funny Moments: Mario and Luigi are chained as they get their picture taken, which they mistaken the cameras for guns.

Mario: Are we dead?

    • In addition, the dancing Goombas can also be seen as one of the few intentionally funny moments.
  • Ham and Cheese: Dennis Hopper's acting is okay in some scenes, but certain others are severely over-acted and full of narm.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The two towers that dominate Koopa's Manhattan-inspired city, one of which looks half-destroyed (actually it's not finished construction yet but the visual effect is the same) and the other of which has a glowing stylized "K" on the side that looks like, depending on how you see it, either an explosion or a gaping hole.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Lena, who is played by Fiona Shaw, tells Daisy that she has her mother's eyes.
  • Mind Game Ship: Between Koopa and Daisy. Lena is not pleased.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Lena stabbing Yoshi.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Has a lot of it.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Harry Potter fans will surely recognize Aunt Petunia as the villainess now.
  • Squick: The fungus, in-universe. Mario in particular is constantly grossed out by it.
  • Ugly Cute: Yoshi.
  • Video Game Movies Suck: The Ur Example of this trope, YMMV on how much it sucks, or whether it even does. While many lament that it's so different from the games as to be In Name Only, some people do enjoy it.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Much like Jurassic Park, this film had to literally invent new technology to make much of its visual effects look as realistic as they do. Unfortunately, Jurassic Park's effects were a much more explicit focus, so it gets more attention for its influence on the industry.
    • Daisy appearing in the sand.
    • The pan over the city towards Koopa's tower. This was done by one man over a period of six months and was deemed impossible beforehand.
    • And the King turning back into a human.