() — After much anticipation and a barrage of criticism, “Super Mario Bros. The Movie” is now in theaters. This Wednesday it premiered with Chris Pratt in the role of the plumber who travels through the pipes of the classic Nintendo video game franchise.
Since Pratt’s casting was announced in September 2021, there has been some disagreement on the internet, mainly from video game purists, who believed that the official voice of Mario in the games – provided by actor Charles Martinet – should have been been the chosen one. Others wanted the role of the Italian plumber to fall to an Italian.
Critics of Chris Pratt in ‘Super Mario Bros. The Movie’ will hear very little of the actor’s Italian accent.
In the end, Pratt’s voice is one of the least notable parts of the new movie… but at first, viewers might think otherwise.
Right at the beginning of the animated film, Pratt’s Mario—along with his brother Luigi (voiced by Charlie Day)—watches a TV commercial they’ve done for their plumbing business in Brooklyn, New York, and their accents Italians in the cheesy ad are unbelievably over the top, to say the least.
Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) in the new “Super Mario Bros. Movie.” (Credit: Illumination)
Afterwards, however, Pratt and Day revert to a mostly bland, somewhat macro-Italian-Brooklyn accent for the rest of the film, with Mario coming to wonder as he ponders the merits of the ad: “Was the accent too much?”
From then on, the only time your Mario seems to remember the undeniably charming catchphrases the character is famous for in actual video games (think, “It’s me, Marrrio!”) is when he’s being knocked out by a bad guy and the action suddenly switches to slow motion.
The super-brothers’ family, however, remains staunchly Italian, with actors Rino Romano, John DiMaggio, and Jessica DiCicco playing their uncles and mother, respectively. And Martinet, at least, gets the voice role of the father of Mario and Luigi.
As for the rest of the film, it’s a fairly straightforward adventure story, but one that sadly eschews many opportunities to make direct references to the classic, nostalgic “Super Mario” video game saga in favor of some shiny new world-building.
Of course, there are plenty of hidden video game references, along with some fine-tuned meta moments, like when Mario is seen playing a video game himself, but in the end, Nintendo enthusiasts and casual fans alike will be asking: ” Is it really you, Marrrio?”
