There is a Super Mario Bros film hitting cinemas this week, and the question on everyone's lips seems to be: will it ruin my childhood? I hope not! But childhood destroying or not (Chris Pratt reckons you're safe, but he would say that), the critical response is surprisingly varied, neither damning nor celebratory, though it is somewhat split between specialist games media thinking it's pretty good, and everyone else thinking it's a typical example of a videogame movie adaptation. In other words, pretty shit.
Take The Guardian for instance, which describes the Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic-directed romp as "tedious and flat in all senses", while also managing to reference Dostoevsky. Or The Independent, which bears the gloriously cruel headline: "Chris Pratt's generic heroism matches adaptation's comfortable mediocrity". The latter review observes that the film might as well have been written by an algorithm, though does begrudgingly admit that the "nods to Mario lore" (easter eggs, in other words) are abundant and "charmingly staged".
