The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

Director: Aaron Horvarth, Michael Jelenic

Cast: Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Day, Jack Black

Have I Seen it Before: Well, here’s the thing, if you’ll forgive me for getting into the review right away. As much as people—and by “people”, I also include both the corporation and creative professionals behind this movie—have looked down on Super Mario Bros. (1993) in the last thirty years, both of these films feel the need to start with nearly the same presence. Mario (Pratt, strangely not nearly as miscast as he appeared on spec) and Luigi (Day) are brave but put-upon Brooklyn plumbers who are pulled into a adventure taking place in a myserious world existing below the New York they know, with the help of a princess (Taylor-Joy) to put a stop to the evil plans of a… guy?… who might be alternatively called Bowser or Koopa, depending on the territory.

Those are the same movies, right? It wasn’t like establishing the brothers in our world was something with which the video games never seemed to bother.

Did I Like It: Aside from that strange parallel to its predecessor, I had to say I was pleasantly surprised by the majority of the film. As I said, Pratt wasn’t nearly as bad as he could have been. The rest of the cast equates itself well, and up until the moment he starts signing, Black is completely unrecognizable in the role. The humor and adventure are well-calibrated to not unduly favor one over the other. That feels like its a complaint, as if it couldn’t be bothered to be interesting, for fear of failing in the attempt, but I understand where they are coming from after everything that happened with the live action attempt. It is a safe, inoffensive piece of entertainment.

In fact, the only particular complaint I can reach for is the strange preponderance of needle drops littered throughout the film. “No Sleep till Brooklyn” might feel like it belongs in the movie, but it’s the Beastie Boys (I’m usually against them showing up anywhere in film, just see <Star Trek (2009)>, but they’re already in Brooklyn when it plays, and I’ve managed to beat all of the NES Mario games, but I apparently lack the skills to understand what “Take on Me” is doing here, other than the fact that the rights holders for a-ha are hard up for cash and willing to let it go for next to nothing.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldaña, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan

Have I Seen it Before: Nope.

Did I Like it: After somehow still missing Black Widow (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and Eternals (2021), only to then sit through the middling experience that I wouldn’t have partaken in if I wasn’t trying to kill a few hours in the midst of an oil change that was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania (2023), I could feel the urgency of the MCU beginning to melt away from me.

But I’m glad this one brought me back. Had it not come out on the weekend I wrapped up a semester, I might have chosen something else to try and relax after 16 weeks of endless discussion board posting, but that would have been a mistake.

I’m still ruminating on this one several days after taking it in, but it’s tempting to say this the best entry in the Guardians trilogy. That statement becomes only more amazing when I can also honestly say that the film is the least funny of the three. It is not a film at all interested in delivering laughs, though. It has far loftier ambitions to go straight for pathos and not let go. It also significantly helps matters that the movie is pointedly uninterested in being beholden to setting up future installments of the larger series. It has proven time and again to be a crucial flaw in some of the studio’s films, including Iron Man 2 (2010), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), and yes, just as recently as Quantummania, and Gunn’s final Marvel film manages to not only duck that problem, but make a strong case for the fact that Gunn had been forging a mini-cinematic universe within the larger MCU. And now Gunn can move on to bigger—and one could dare hope better—things.

Somehow a Marvel movie has made me even more hopeful for the future of DC movies, which is not an arrangement of words that make any sense in that order, but when delivered in context is a delight.

Now just release Batgirl, and we’ll be more than fine.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern

Have I Seen it Before: Nope, although after those reviews opening weekend, my speed in wanting to watch diminished more than a bit.

Did I Like It: I’m glad that the movie has bad reviews, because it allowed me to go in with the lowest possible expectations. Is this the worst of all possible Jurassic movies? Almost certainly. Did I have something approaching a good time with it? Also, yes.

Many will complain (and fairly so) that the movie is only barely about dinosaurs, instead cooking up an often convoluted plot surrounding corporate intrigue, the vagaries of genetic research, and locusts. A bill of false goods, possibly, but anyone who has read the original Crichton novel would recognize some ideas brought to their perhaps incredulous conclusion. As I read that preceding paragraph, I’m not entirely sure I’m happy about this direction or not. I’ll only commit to the view that I don’t reflexively hate it as much as others might.

Any film that would give me this much Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is at least something of a winner. I’m looking in your direction, <Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2019>. The other legacy characters are a welcome treat, but I’m inevitably thinking about a far better film each and every time Neill and Dern share the frame. A film that would have been wall-to-wall these characters might have still been a letdown from previous entries in the series, but the film is at its most alive in those moments.

And that quality is in stark contrast to the lukewarm continuation of Pratt and Howard’s characters that make up the other half of the film. Most of Fallen Kingdom fell out of my head by the time I hit the parking lot, so offering us continuation of those themes never seemed like more than a drag. I honestly can’t remember the Pratt character’s name even now. I want to say Skip Burtman? Something tells me we won’t have to endure a legacy-legacy sequel in thirty years where Pratt and Howard sort out their issues and find golden year happiness.

But do you want to know what really irritates me about the movie? Locusts? I’m fine? Raptor trainer Biff Motorcyclovitz tries my patience on the way to becoming a better adoptive father? I can imagine there might be a fan of Fallen Kingdom who exists and would feel cheated without a third act to that story.

No, I can’t stand the beginning and ending of this movie. In recent years, there has been a trend of “The Ending of (insert movie here) explained” videos on YouTube where some smarmy jag with a Blue microphone* goes over the ending of every big movie and explains it to you, just in case you were unable to wrap your head around the intricacies of a movie geared toward ten-year-olds. They are deeply an unrelentingly irritating. The good news is that there is no need for such a video where Dominion is concerned. Trevorrow and company have included it right in the runtime! A movie is usually in trouble when it has to have a voice over to open and close things (you’ll notice <Jurassic Park (1993)> didn’t need one) but we have no entered the age when we apparently need a Youtube video to tuck is in before and after a movie.

We really don’t.

*As a smarmy jag with a few Blue microphones myself, I feel justified in that assessment.

The Lego Movie (2014)

Director: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, certainly. The theatrical release coincided with my most recent dip into the wild world of LEGO. I’ve taken another dip recently, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also because they have finally relented to the wishes I never even knew I had and are releasing a LEGO typewriter quite soon.

Did I Like It: It’s a pretty dumb idea for a movie, and one that has become all-too-prevalent in the movies over the last few decades. Take anything. Any property which people will automatically recognize and already has the potential for endless tie-in products. Doesn’t matter is if it has no narrative that one can find. Dust off some rudimentary Joseph Campbell. And you’ve got yourself a movie. After Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)—to say nothing of its sequels—and Batman (1989) it irretrievably became a governing principle of Hollywood production.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I like—hell, border on psychotically love—both of those films. Those films had narratives to tap into or create. The problems started when the experiment got out of the lab and anything was worthy of a feature film. You can get upset with this assessment if you like, but aside from Madeline Khan, Clue (1985) isn’t as good as you remember it. This doesn’t even cover the journeys into the inexplicable that were Ouija (2014) and Battleship (2012). Even the Pirates of the Caribbean films started off strong, but almost immediately descended into the basest forms of corporate synergy that one would have assumed they would always be.

And so, too, it could have been with The Lego Movie. But it wasn’t. Lord and Miller take their unique skills that actually made 21 Jump Street (2012) a watchable film and make a movie meant to market toys—delightful and engaging though they may be—and make it a revolutionary notion in simultaneous support of embracing the inner spark of creative anarchy and holding in high esteem the virtue of collective action.

It’s a children’s movie that should never have gotten the green light from a major studio, to say nothing of the board of directors of a toy company with shareholders to consider. Every once in a while film can harness something that surpasses the commercial necessities of producing pieces of art at such a high level.

That this worked so brilliantly—and not a little bit hilariously—almost makes the fact that they tried to make a movie out of Super Mario Bros. (1993) worth all the trouble.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Director: J.A. Bayona

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Jeff Goldblum.

Have I Seen It Before?: Yes…

Did I like it?: But it’s memory had pretty thoroughly faded by the time I came back around to watch it again. Quite specifically, I couldn’t remember in which of the World sub-series did they come upon the wrecked electric Ford Explorer that Sam Neill and Joseph Mazzello escaped from in Jurassic Park (1993)* until the scene that featured it came started in this film.

My lack of memory cannot bode well for my feelings about the film. It also is telling that I spent far more time wondering during this film than I did with the original Jurassic World (2015) why the vestiges of the old park from the original film weren’t completely cleared out by the time the 21st century version of the park opened.

I also can’t help feeling that this movie is really two ideas for two separate movies, neither of which were enough to prop up their own single feature. I’m fairly interested in the idea of a ticking timebomb movie, trying to save as many dinosaurs—even if they are trying to eat the people—as possible before a long dormant volcano takes everyone and everything out. I’m far less interested in yet another cat-and-mouse scenario with raptors, all held together by the tenuous glue of greedy heirs to the legacy of John Hammond. 

In my review of Jurassic World, I praised it for not feeling the need to hinge any part of its appeal on a returning original cast member. This film sees fit to fall pressure to the legacy sequel formula, but in its surrender is frustratingly stingy with what they’re prepared to bring us. We get a brief scene of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) testifying before Congress, and then another scene of him doing the same thing at the end. I was promised a measure of Goldblum and I feel cheated by the amount I received. Even Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) knew its own weakness and attempted to compensate by turning the Goldblum meter up to 11.

Jurassic World (2015)

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, BD Wong

Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, sure.

Did I like it?: If a movie isn’t a Marvel movie, chances are it is a legacy sequel. Some have been delightful, like Halloween (2018). Some groan through the bloated run time and are instantly forgotten as soon as the lights in the theater come up, like Tron: Legacy (2010) or, for a far more apt comparison here, Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). 

Why does this one work so well? One might be tempted to say that it doesn’t try to groan its way through including an aging cast member in the proceedings, and lets us learn to like the new characters that are the vehicle of the plot, but movies like Star Trek (2009) and the aforementioned Halloween’s best moments are with Leonard Nimoy and Jamie Lee Curtis. Even so, this film has a reprisal from BD Wong as geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, but it’s not exactly like that was a special moment in the trailer or a focal point in the poster.

Maybe Jurassic World’s secret weapon lies in a mostly successful attempt to capture the spirit of the original film and not just pepper the film with references to the original and jam it into some kind of framework that would be more palatable for a modern audience. The references are there—an extended sequence in the ruins of the original park from Jurassic Park (1993) and a few brief glances at a book written by Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)—but they aren’t the main thrust of the plot. I’m looking in your direction, Luke/Anakin’s lightsaber. The movie tries its best to capture that Amblin spirit, complete with a sensitive, mop-topped young boy dealing with the fantastic things around him while the family situation may be unravelling a bit.

It doesn’t hurt that the true focal point of the film is one of the more charming movie stars to become a leading man in recent memory, Chris Pratt. He manages to sell the notion of trainable Raptor soldiers, and that isn’t exactly something that any other actor could make watchable. Sure, the special effects have already aged a bit even in the five years since its release, where the first thing remarkably holds up after thirty years, but it is imminently digestible entertainment, and that is all that it aimed for.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

Director: Mike Mitchell

Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Somehow missed the movie while it was in theaters. 

Did I Like It: That above statement might dictate this one once again, but you know what? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this one is… sigh… awesome.

The first The Lego Movie (2014) was a revelation wrapped up in a movie that had no right to claim anything resembling a revelation. It’s ultimate twist that—like a Toy Story (1995) with a heaping portion of self-awareness—the proceedings are the playful mental wanderings of a boy (Jadon Sand) trying to just play with his father’s massive collection of Lego. It was a deceptively powerful meditation on creativity wrapped up in a movie wherein one of the characters is constantly asking after the location of his pants.

Where could a possible sequel even go from that high example? The first film sets up a new threat by allowing the boy’s sister (Brooklyn Prince) to also play with the massive piles of bricks, thus threatening to ruin all the boy’s master plans, starting the cycle all over again.

And this is where many may want to break ways with the new film. The revelation is gone, and each plot development is predictable first and enjoyable second. 

The question then becomes, is this a problem? Is it fair to compare the film to its progenitor? Is it fair to expect every film clearly made for children to re-wrinkle our adult brains? The answer to all three of those questions are probably no. 

To bypass the question of fairness, and address them in reverse order: It’s not fair to expect every movie made for children to really blow our collective hair back. There are plenty of great children’s films that possess only quality storytelling without any Charlie Kaufman-esque antics in place. 

While it may not be fair to compare this sequel to its predecessor, that comparison is hard to avoid, and through that prism the film suffers slightly. 

But here’s the takeaway: that isn’t a problem. The film is enjoyable, charming, and visually doesn’t let up. It may benefit from coming after the more aggressively disappointing Lego Batman Movie (2017). So what if it isn’t one of the greatest animated movies of all time? Thankfully there are plenty of perfectly fine films within the genre that aren’t as awesome as some of the others.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Kurt Russell

Have I Seen it Before: Sure. And I’m only 50% sure that’s a comment on how this film is very much More Of The Same in relation to the original Guardians of the Galaxy (2014).

Did I Like It: It’s good, but I’m surprised to report that it hasn’t stuck with me like some of the other films in the MCU.

And to add a statement like that doesn’t feel fair. I can’t fault the film in any way. The movie is generally amiable and funny throughout, and it manages to avoid the occasion Part II curse of Marvel movies and is happily content to not need to set up much for future films. 

As a matter of fact, there are several elements of the film that are candidates for the Greatest Of All Time. The opening credits are a big ball of crowd-pleasing joy. It possesses far and above the greatest Stan Lee cameo in any film ever. Peter Quill (Pratt) exclaiming “I’m going to make some weird shit!” is as fine a creative mission statement as we’re ever going to get on film. 

One might think that the reliance on Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) for much of the action and plot would be cloying, but I’m of a mind to believe the market research dictating that idea was right on that money. Anyone who insists they aren’t entertained by Groot is hiding something. Maybe they aren’t charmed by the toddler tree, but if that much is true, they probably have a couple of bodies buried in their backyard.

I also appreciate that Quill’s walkman actually sounds as crappy as a walkman ought to sound in the instant before Ego (Russell) destroys it, but only because it resolves one of my nitpicks from the original film.

As I type all of this I begin to realize that maybe on this viewing the movie will stick with me more. It deserves to.

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Lee Pace

Have I Seen it Before: I’m not sure what insisted that I make it for the opening weekend of a movie featuring characters I had no prior awareness, but we all made it, and now Star-Lord and company are all a part of us… And many of us were not opposed to the idea of a (new) Howard the Duck movie as we thought we might have been beforehand.

The state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was probably more precarious in 2014 than Disney and Company. The movies had yet to flounder at the box office, and The Avengers (2012) was one of the big box-office money makers of all time. But, as could clearly be seen now through the lens of hindsight, the characters we had all come to love (or, more accurately, the actors playing them) might not be cost effective for the bean counters anymore.

And so, Marvel would have to start dipping deeper into the catalog. It was a gamble on Marvel’s part, but they could afford to gamble a bit at this point in their output. But they did it in a smart way. They did it just a little bit, and they made sure the movie they branched out in was actually pretty good. And they managed to stumble upon the reality that Chris Pratt was a verifiable movie star*.

And so the movie plays out like an approximation of what it would be like if Quentin Tarantino made a high-action space opera**. Gunn may not quite be the mast craftsman that Tarantino is, but the dish is made with the right ingredients, and presents a pretty enjoyable feast, all things considered.

On one directly critical note: is it weird that I think the biggest suspension of disbelief in this movie is that I’m supposed to somehow believe that a cassette mix tape has crystal-clear audio quality nearly thirty years after it was originally mixed? When played through a walkman that was just as old? That the tape ever played that well? In a movie filled with hollowed-out god heads, tree men, and the blind faith that a superhero movie with no known superheroes could ever hope to be any kind of hit, the music presentation probably shouldn’t bother me, and yet, there are moments when I can’t quite push it out of my mind.

*Although I’ll admit that I might be wrong in this assessment. The end titles call the shot that the Guardians will return. I mean, I suppose they might have been able to guess that even if the movie underperformed, they would play a vital role in the quickly forming Infinity Saga but man… Especially in a movie with the aforementioned Howard, they should have allowed for the possibility that this might not work out quite as well as they might have hoped.

**Which—to be fair—he still may do.