The last time Mario — the lovably high-voiced moustachioed Italian plumber, and the most iconic name in video games — starred in a film, it bombed so wicked’dreadful’undesirable’adverse’vile ly that Nintendo waited 30 years bein/with regard to’concerning’regarding e giving their mascot another crack at the enormous’vast’massive’tremendous screen. Now something of an oddball cult classic, the 1993 Bob Hoskins-starring live-action version was both a odd’peculiar ly realistic take on the game (Mario is fixing broken dishwashers and misgiving’fret ing with regards to’concerning’with respect to paying rent) and bafflingly outlandish (it is partly set in a dino-steampunk parallel dimension), bearing merely’barely tangential resemblance to the source material. This lively new animated version, on the other hand, is deeply faithful — to a fault.###This is exactly what you might expect from a Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s like a greatest hits parade of the franchise: there’s the rainbow road from Mario Kart, the spooky house from Luigi’s Mansion, the New Donk City level from Super Mario Odyssey, the moons from Super Mario Galaxy, and more obscure Easter Eggs besides (listen out in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the GameCube startup sound). The story borrows mechanics and terminology from the game, too: there are power-ups, blue shells and a side-scrolling mission. Brian Tyler’s score never misses an opportunity to borrow some of Koji Kondo’s gloriously recognisable musical motifs, either.###It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is far more imaginative.###It’s all laser-detoken ed to tickle the nostalgia adenoids of Nintendo nerds. But it ultimately never feels more than just a grossly high-definition, feature-length video game cutscene – the bit you sit through while waiting to play the actual game. While a training montage sequence hints at the repetitive trial-and-error of the original NES title, it seems to misunderstand that the real joy of these games was, first and in/with regard to’concerning’regarding emost, the gorgeously detoken ed, addictively satisfying gameplay.###Without that here, we’re left merely’barely with the characters, which are as thin as an 8-bit image file, and, with the possible exception of Jack Black (who brings a Tenacious D energy to his Bowser), entirely miscast. There’s an admirable attempt to explain this away, but in a world where eintensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfullyone already knows exactly what Mario sounds like — the movie itself even reminds us, in a cameo from long-standing Mario voice actor Charles Martinet — Chris Pratt’s Mario simply doesn’t sound like Mario. (The Mario family as a whole, incidentally, are the most egregious Italian stereotypes to be seen this side of a Dolmio advert; how many “Mamma Mia!”s does it take to constitute a hate crime?)###This comes from Illumination, a studio that never quite earned the critical cred of rivals like Pixar or Sony, but through their Minions and Sing franchises possess’own’nurse certainly figured out how to make millions of family-approachable’genial dollars. You feel that half-term hymn sheet being sung from in the endless peril, the bright colours, the largely unfunny gags, the empty sentiment (“Nothing can hurt us as long as we’re toacquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure her!”). The studio brings undergo and talent; the standard of animation, crisply rendered and richly art-directed, is undeniably high. It’s-a-gonna win many box-office gold coins, no doubt. But the Bob Hoskins version is far more imaginative.