What's it about? Based on the hugely popular Nintendo video game, the success of Super Mario Bros. at the box office should have been a sure thing. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo star as the eponymous plumbers who find themselves battling the evil King Koopa (Dennis Hopper), who seeks to unite two dimensions into one for him to rule over. It's the standard good versus evil found in most Hollywood blockbusters, so what set this apart from those which succeeded? Why was it doomed to fail? Play any Mario game you care to think of for around 30 seconds, then watch the first 30 seconds of Super Mario Bros. and the most immediate reason why the movie flopped will be obvious - it just wasn't Mario. From Bob Hoskins's decidedly un-Italian accent through to the production design - which resembles something out of a Terry Gilliam film far more than the bright and colourful landscapes of Shigeru Miyamoto's games - it's as if the filmmakers deliberately tried to take a dump over the feel and aesthetics of the source material. Few involved have spoken highly of the production in the years since, with Hoskins stating, "It was a nightmare, very honestly, that movie. It was a husband and wife directing team who were both control freaks and wouldn't talk before they made decisions."
