Super Mario Bros. movie: 'Chris Pratt doesn't ruin the movie' but it's still not that great

pcgamer.com:

There is a Super Mario Bros. movie 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».

The BBC review is surprisingly bereft of scathing one-liners, but does offer some interesting observations. «The film-makers are obviously so sure that they have a can't-fail franchise on their hands that they haven't even bothered with world-building,» it reads, going on to deconstruct an inconsistency in Princess Peach's origin story. The Associated Press meanwhile calls it «an hour and a half's worth of superlative marketing», and Mashable agrees that it feels like marketing in its negative appraisal: «it feels like one long commercial.»

Non-gaming media does have a handful of positive responses. Entertainment Weekly writes, somewhat unconvincingly, that it's all «quite fun»,