Happy 20th Birthday To The Horrible “Super Mario Bros.” Movie

Twenty years ago this weekend The Super Mario Bros Movie was deuced out of Hollywood's flabby butt into theaters across America. It may be one of the biggest abominations in film history. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo play Mario and Luigi, (an English dude and a Latino guy?). Dennis Hopper played King Koopa in all his coked-out scene chewing glory. Instead of taking place in a trippy land of little penis-shaped goombas and spiky turtles, the action happens in a world where Koopa has somehow managed to evolve dinosaurs into people but they are still kind of dinosaurs, I guess? I don't know, but it is friggin' terrible. I've said it before and I will say it again, it is ALWAYS a bad idea to make a movie based on a video game. Always. The narrative structures are completely different plus video game stories are rarely all that fleshed out. I can explain all of the original Super Mario game in one sentence, "Two Italian plumbers travel through pipes to The Mushroom Kingdom to rescue a princess from the evil Bowser". Not exactly Shakespeare.

The makers of the film know how bad it is. Hoskins said it was the biggest regret of his life and if he could do one thing over it would be not to make this movie. In this video, John Leguizamo offers a bit of an apology and a bit of reflection on the film's legacy. As talented as Leguizamo is, he's lucky he ever got work again.