u/Duncan_Dixon_Coffey

There are 1.36 billion reasons why The Super Mario Galaxy Movie needs to exist, none of which are good on any creative or entertainment level. Look, I get that big-budget IP movies like this is designed to make money. But this is easily the most audience-insulting cash-grab in recent memory. F1: The Movie and Jurassic World Rebirth are masterpieces compared to this.

On every single conceivable creative level, this is a depressing rock bottom for what movies can be in 2026. Comparing it to rock bottom is an insult to rocks and bottoms. At least rocks can make me feel something after I hit my head against them, unlike this dumpster fire I just watched.

The first movie is far from accomplished, but it at least had moments of imagination, like the linking of the ‘real’ world with the Mushroom Kingdom via warp pipe and funny visual gags with the penguins from the Snow Kingdom. This movie, by dispiriting contrast, is a 98-minute sugar rush of non-stop action set pieces, all of which are stuffed with Easter eggs from various Mario games. It’s almost like the movie is desperately asking us, ‘are you having fun yet?!?’

While there’s a plot in the most threadbare definition of the word - Mario and gang need to save Rosalina from Bowser and Bowser Jr. - there’s no semblance of an actual story to be found. Any hints of a potential storyline - like the father-son story with the Bowsers - are almost immediately dropped in favour of more ‘remember this level/power up/monster from the video games?!?’. What’s doubly baffling about this pandering approach is how the movie moves so quickly that there’s no room for audiences to appreciate anything.

By trying to appeal to Mario fans’ nostalgia in such a nakedly embarrassing way, all the characters are effectively sidelined. Every single speaking character has no more than a handful of lines, and those that made the cut are pure exposition or dumb jokes with no punchline. Why this movie even bothered to expand its voice cast to include Brie Larson, Glen Powell, Donald Glover, and Benny Safdie escapes me because the script might as well be non-existent. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie could’ve been a literal wordless movie and still had the same effect. Kudos to the whole voice cast for what must’ve been the easiest job of their whole careers.

Young kids are obviously the main audience for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but the emptiness of all the visual chaos is so dire that we need to have a serious intervention on the quality of content we serve them. Kids may not understand the nuance or subtext of something like Ratatouille, but at least that movie doesn’t insult their intelligence. Hell, even Zootopia 2 had some kind of family-friendly moral message about tolerance. This, on the other hand, is the purest distillation of ‘minimal effort’ in the form an overwhelmingly colourful pile of brain rot that’s as insulting as it is lazy, almost like the filmmakers are outright disdainful of their young audience.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/the-super-mario-galaxy-movie

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For the first 30 minutes, The Drama plays exactly like the surface level rom-com it seemingly presents itself to be. Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) have their charming meet-cute in a café, we see a montage of their budding relationship, and we’re introduced to their entertaining best friends, Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim, being given a bit more to chew on than her extended cameo in One Battle After Another).

Every rom-com trope is unashamedly wielded like an oversized knife, yet this section just feels like a warm hug. Charlie and Emma are no Harry and Sally, but they’re fun! He’s the more neurotic and introverted oddball, she’s the louder and more ‘out there’ extrovert, but they match each other’s freak. Their café meet-cute was several times more interesting than whatever Anyone But You was trying to do, and unlike Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, you can immediately feel the chemistry between Pattinson and Zendaya.

But beneath these positive vibes is a feeling of unease. While Charlie and Emma appear to be truly happy in the lead-up to their wedding, The Drama playfully touches on the idea of how much one should reveal to their partner and whether a relationship can survive a truly cataclysmic truth. It’s not explicitly stated (fortunately), but you can tell from the subtext and the fact that we only get to know Charlie and Emma on a surface level for most of the movie. They’re barely sketches of characters, and this is not something that can be hand-waved away by pre-wedding nerves.

Screenwriter/director Kristoffer Borgli elevates those heady relationship ideas in The Drama with some aesthetically pleasing storytelling, almost to the point of being too much. Rapid-fire cuts between grainy past scenes and crisp present-day moments are strategically used to show Charlie and Emma’s relationship through both the good and the bad. This is then juxtaposed with an extended sequence of Charlie and Emma practicing their choreographed wedding dance. Long, sweeping shots are punctuated with some needle drops as Pattinson and Zendaya put on a very impressive display of dancing. Maybe these crazy kids will make it after all.

Honestly, I would happily take a full 90 minutes of Pattinson and Zendaya playing out all the rom-com greatest hits in a visually gorgeous movie. But alas, this is called The Drama for a reason. When Emma’s big secret (which I won’t spoil and will refer to it in vague terms from here on out) gets exposed at the end of act one, this movie truly becomes ‘the drama’, for better and worse.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/the-drama

Thanks!