Remember last year when they released the cast list and we weren’t sure if it was a joke or not? Especially the Chris Pratt part?
We all had this series of emotions, right? Shut the fuck up, we all did. How on God’s Green Earth did everyone at Nintendo manage to put this package together and sent it out on God’s Beige Internet without all of them laughing to the point of stroke and/or hemorrhage? It all sounds like some terrible last minute Saturday Night Live sketch, you know, one of the ones they run at 12:55 because they don’t have a lot of confidence in it.
Of course you’re going to start the joke with Chris Pratt because this guy’s hammy face has to be in literally everything or the universe is going to collapse in itself or some shit. Then you toss out Charlie Day as Luigi because it would be funny to think of Luigi as Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In fact, if this was a sketch, Charlie Day would be hosting and just doing Charlie lines in a cheap Luigi costume from Spirit with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. And of course, the biggest laugh is saved for the end: Seth Rogen as fucking Donkey Kong because where the fuck is Donkey Kong supposed to show up in a Mario movie? That’s a double joke!
I don’t know, it took me a full day to realize this wasn’t some sort of elaborate, ill-timed prank.
And then a whole year went by, no stills, no teasers, nothing was released. We all know Nintendo can be exacting with their products and Illumination can be…um…cheap, I want to say? Yeah, cheap. How did this deal even happen in the first place, anyway?
Put simply, it was looking like the movie was going to be very, very bad.
But Now, The Trailer
It looks like it might be…good? The animation detail looks pretty on point, they somehow got Bowser to look like both Bowser and Jack Black at the same time, and the tone seems pretty spot on.
Key words here: might be good.
The teaser doesn’t really show us much of anything, and even if it did we’ve all been burned before. Trailers generally aren’t even cut by the people who make the movie for Christ’s sake, this could make us all weep in the theaters with much gnashing of teeth. There could be riots.
But maybe not.
And if it’s not? If the movie is serviceable, good, dare I say Very Good?
That Makes the Chris Pratt Thing 1000% Funnier
The only other voices we hear in this trailer from the cast drop are Bowser and Toad, and its obvious both Jack Black and Keegan-Michael Key have come to work. They are actually, you know, doing voice acting.
And then there’s Chris Pratt, with the mildest of Italian accents. The barest of Italian accents. The Olive Garden Italian accent. There was a dude in this local Italian joint I used to go to all the time in Orlando that I swear to bathtub Mary was faking his Italian accent for tips, and he was doing it a hell of a lot better than Chris Pratt here.
So if the movie is complete trash, it won’t matter, right? Chris Pratt’s terrible voice acting is going to be so much static in the noise. No one will notice.
But if the movie is good, that means that there will be entire sections of the movie – full minutes – where you’ll actually be enjoying yourself right up until Chris Pratt’s mildly-seasoned voice comes out of Mario’s tennis ball head to completely rip you out of the story and remind you that they fucking cast Chris Pratt as Mario when Charles Martinet is still alive.
One way or another this movie is going to be hilarious.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 