The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is off to a rough start with critics, but that might not matter, especially with box office estimates sky-high.
As of Tuesday, the score sits at 44% on Rotten Tomatoes from 59 reviews.
The number is below the first Super Mario Bros. Movie, which holds a 59% critics score and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
While it may look like cause for concern, the pattern looks familiar: critics are mixed to negative again, while the expectation is that general audiences and families will love the movie. The Audience Score will become available as the movie starts to get released officially on Wednesday.
What the negative reviews are saying
The biggest complaint is the same one critics had with the first movie: a lot of spectacle, not much story.
Reviewers keep coming back to the idea that the movie is overloaded with Nintendo references, bright visuals, and nonstop action, but doesn’t give Mario and the rest of the cast enough emotional weight or a strong narrative spine.
A lot of the harsher reviews also say the movie feels more like brand maintenance than an actual adventure.
The visuals get praise even from some negative critics, but they argue the film mistakes motion for momentum and nostalgia for substance.
What the positive reviews are saying
The positive reviews also don’t pretend this is some deep animated masterpiece (and arguably it’s not supposed to be).
The critics who like it mostly say it does what it sets out to do: deliver fast-paced fun, strong animation, fan-service, colorful worlds, and enough charm to keep kids and Nintendo fans happy.
The praise is mostly about presentation, energy, and spectacle, not story.
A few of the better notices also point to Rosalina, Yoshi, and the expanded cosmic setting as upgrades over the first movie.
So even some critics who admit the plot is thin still think the sequel looks better, moves bigger, and gives fans more of what they came for.
Critics vs Fans
So the early Rotten Tomatoes score tells a pretty clear story.
Critics are again divided on whether a Mario movie needs more than nostalgia, chaos, and eye candy.
The negative camp says Nintendo and Illumination made another empty franchise exercise.
The positive camp says that misses the point, because this is supposed to be a fun, colorful ride for kids and fans first.
Either way, the first movie already proved that critics do not necessarily decide how big a Mario movie becomes, and this sequel looks set to repeat the same argument.
