Originally posted on Letterboxd Whenever people bring up a Super Mario Bros. movie they will 90 of the time either bring up the liveaction film from the 90s that nobody likes or the brand new animated movie coming out soon that everyone says is gonna be amazing and then will be heavily disappointed at least I hope not. However what many dont know is that there was another Super Mario Bros. movie that was made way before any of those made only 1 year after the original game. The film is known as Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach which was an anime film made in 1986 and was actually the very first movie made based on a video game. So as the first video game movie how is it? Well... I can certainly say that it is a movie. A movie that was very entertaining to watch for all the wrong reasons but overall looking back I would simply say that it was ok. By the way for my viewing of the film I watched an English fandub online on the YouTube channel Kyer Entertainment. I am aware that there are other dubs of the movie online but for the sake of this review this is the version that I will be referring to. My thoughts would pretty much remain the same for other dubs of the film aside from the voice acting and possibly the music. The story is exactly what you would expect from a Mario Bros. movie but I guess I cant be mad about it since it came out so soon after the original game the characters are mainly adapted from the game and they are enjoyable with a few exceptions being pretty weird such as Luigi being greedy throughout the animation is actually pretty good especially for an anime made in 1986 even if the designs of some characters such as Luigi arent that accurate to what they would become and the additions to the lore of Mario are weird but they do at least make the world more interesting. And speaking of which this brings up a complaint I have about the film: it is weird. I mean REALLY weird. A lot of instances in the movie such as actions performed by characters moments and lines of dialogue will most likely catch you off guard and make you question what you are watching. At least thats how it was for me. Although with that being said I shouldve expected at least some weirdness from an anime and I will admit it does make the film more funny and fun to watch. This perfectly leads to one of the biggest factors of enjoyment in this film for me: the english dub. Now once again this only applies to this specific dub that I watched but either way the voice acting in this dub is GOD AWFUL in many ways. Either the actors arent trying enough they are trying too hard they are putting on the wrong voice for the character or they are just flat out bad. However with that being said it is THAT kind of bad. The kind of bad that is absolutely amazing to experience and it definitely made the film much more entertaining to watch and I would definitely recommend this specific dub just to hear the voice acting. Overall with all that being said despite the amazingly awful voice acting great animation and weirdness factor it is a pretty standard adaptation and film in general. It isnt bad by any means but I wouldnt say it is anywhere near just ok or wonderfully awful but even then I wouldnt wanna say its awful. It was too fun for me to truly hate but not enough to make me truly love it.