Ok so, thoughts on the movie, non-spoiler stuff first

The broad strokes of the story and themes/messages are pretty straightforward and generic, but the ride to get there is a blast! I laughed out loud a lot, and had a lot of really exciting moments. The set-pieces and animation were amazing, and they used ideas from the Mario world in tons of really unique and creative ways!

Overall, I loved it, and would highly recommend it! ^.^

Spoiler review below :

Pros :

I am so fucking glad Lumalee got past the censor! He’s my favorite character in the film by far!

The rainbow road section did some really awesome stuff, the blue shell gag was great!

I loved the 80’s music tracks that popped in, and they fit really well!

Our brains have been trained to expect cute characters to be unexpectedly op, but the penguins snow cannons did exactly what you would expect, and comepletely took me by surprise! XD

Toad is great XD

I loved Bowsers characterization! As a huge fan of Mario RPG’s they definitely got his vibe from those games down! His musical sections were great too, especially the post-credits scene. Jack Black was a great choice lol

Cons :

Some parts of the story felt a little contrived, like peach going with bowser and then boldly announcing she was going to “surprise attack” bowser? And the reaction of everyone seeing bowsers castle in Brooklyn didn’t make much sense. Neither did it make much sense for Mario and Luigi to just decide to explore instead of saving Brooklyn lol

The character who’s a bit like Toadsworth isn’t Toadsworth. In a movie full of great references, this should be a crime! XD

Luigi only had a few great moments. If they do do a sequel I hope he gets more opportunities to be heroic. His few moments were really good though!

Back to pros, I was literally yelling at the screen that they should grab Bowser by the tail, and they did! That was so cool! ^.^

Overall, I’d sum up the whole film by saying it’s a creative and exciting love-letter to everything Mario, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!