Movie critics, bless their hearts, have a tough job. They’re also prone to groupthink and to insane errors from time to time.
Reviewing movies is inherently a subjective enterprise, a fact that’s always worth keeping in mind whenever a snobby critic bashes a movie you were looking forward to — or turns up their nose at a film you thought was a super-fun experience. From time to time, though, there’s no getting around it: The critics have just flat-out gotten things wrong, perhaps as a result of groupthink or because watching too many movies has made them jaded a-holes and less able to appreciate individual titles on their merits.
Whatever the reason, critics will not infrequently miss the mark on all sorts of movies. And in this post, I’m going to showcase a list of films from the recent past as well as the not-so-recent past that I think critics by and large got wrong — leading up to the movie that, in my opinion, is among the most wronged of all time by the professional reviewer class.The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Let’s start with an easy one.
Look, I’m not even a serious gamer, I didn’t own a Nintendo system for most of my life, and I feel like I’m the last person who ought to be saying this: But watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie on the big screen was so much fun. With one exception that I’ll come to, none of the movies I’m going to highlight in this post aim for some kind of artistic “greatness,” whatever that is; regardless, they can still achieve a specific kind of entertainment — making people feel good, without resorting to lowest-common-denominator tactics. That’s what the Mario movie absolutely did.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie was clearly written and made by people who have an affection for the iconic video game franchise. It’s vibrant, colorful, and features a great cast (props to whoever cast Jack Black as the super-villain Bowser). All in all, the movie captured the essence of the games pretty well, so shame on the critics for this one — that score above should definitely be higher.
