Released on April 1, 2026, directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, and starring actors such as Chris Pratt and Charlie Day, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is trying to be a lot of things. It’s trying to be a sequel to the first animated Mario movie from all the way back in 2023. It’s trying to be a movie for general audiences, families, and Nintendo fans. And it’s trying to be an adaptation of the 2007 game Super Mario Galaxy. And after watching it for myself, I think it fails at being at least one of these.

For starters, I would like to give my main praise first: the film’s soundtrack. Every other scene, I was able to pick out a different music piece or leitmotif from the various Mario games, but not limited to Good Egg Galaxy and Comet Observatory from Mario Galaxy, the SMB2 Boss Theme, the SMB3 battle theme, and Fossil Falls from Odyssey, the movie contains over 80+ musical references. I believe Nintendo fans such as myself will at the very least enjoy listening to the score, both when watching the film and outside of it. The film is also visually stunning, even more so than the first.

Unfortunately, if one is looking for an engaging story, they won’t find much in terms of plot. And this is actually my biggest criticism of the movie. Without getting into spoiler territory, the storyline follows Princess Peach and Toad traveling across the galaxy to save Princess Rosalina from Bowser Jr. The Mario brothers, accompanied by Yoshi and Bowser, follow after them to reunite the latter with his son. A majority of the plot’s events feel slap-dashed and stitched together. Its consistent problem is that rather than a cohesive story, it chooses to be more of a point-at-the-screen and gawk-at-all-the-game-references-and-easter-eggs movie. The storyline is quite weak. The film also lacks any character development whatsoever. There is an attempt to give Bowser an arc early on, but it gets dropped and reset around halfway through the runtime. And remember how I said the film tries to be an adaptation of the Super Mario Galaxy game? Unfortunately, this is another area where it falls short.

That game, by far, has one of the most unique, impactful and overall best stories told in a Mario game. And it basically gets butchered in the film. The only aspects that resemble that game that get representation in the movie are the fact that Rosalina and her Lumas are her and the concept of jumping from planet-to-planet across the galaxy. Like the first film, it chooses to be more of a hodgepodge of characters and plot from across all the games such as Super Mario Odyssey and Yoshi’s Island. Though I’m not a fan of this style of film on paper, I was fine with this during the first movie. But it doesn’t work the second time around when it’s specifically trying to be a film about the galaxy games.

Overall, I rate The Super Mario Galaxy Movie a 4/10. Unfortunately, I have to agree with many of the criticisms that film critics have with the movie. I enjoyed the comprehensive score and beautiful visuals, but the film’s writing, strung-together plot and failure to work as an adaptation of the game it’s trying to be, really fell flat for me. General audiences and families will enjoy it, and if one is a Nintendo fan and can look past my criticisms, then one might have a better time. But I don’t plan on revisiting this movie in the future.