“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” - This is the Bad Place.

When asked what I thought of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie after the movie ended, I nodded my head at a five-year old girl exiting the theater and said, “her opinion is the only one that matters.” Five-year olds haven’t yet developed complicated or nuanced views of pop culture, certainly not movies. Their taste in films begins with BRIGHTER!! and ends with LOUDER!! As for me, I thought it was bad. So bad, in fact, that it’s the kind of shirt they torture people with in the Bad Place. I said, shirt. Why can’t I say shirt? Oh, this is the Bad Place.

I’m not going to sugar coat anything here. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is an audio-visual assault of non-stop fan service that will leave you with a migraine at best and brain damage at worst. And when I say fan service, heavy emphasis on service. To paraphrase Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, if you shine a black light in the theater after this film concludes it will look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

The amount of fan service makes sense when you realize how incredibly lazy the filmmaking was. With the barest semblance of a plot, zero character arcs, and absolutely no development of new or returning characters, it makes sense to try to fill that void with enough easter eggs to clog every toilet in every world. That’s how the Bad Place works.

In fact, there are so many easter eggs they’re not even limited to the world of Super Mario. Fox McCloud (Glen Powell) from the Star Fox games appears as a glorified cameo/supporting character because why the fork not? There’s also a T-Rex for the same reason. Wait, I said fork, not fork. Ugh. Stupid Bad Place.

I would never accuse The Super Mario Bros. Movie of having a great plot, but at least it had one that was coherent. What little plot there is in Galaxy is Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) kidnaps Princess Peach’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) sister Rosalina (Brie Larson) to suck Rosalina’s stardust power into a weapon that will destroy the universe. And he does this because he’s trying to impress his dad, Bowser (Jack Black). Hey dumbash, you and your dad are part of that universe.

That may sound like a straight-forward plot, but Rosalina is kidnapped in the very first scene of the movie. All Junior has to do is fly to his own private Death Star...I mean Starkiller Base...I mean, weirdo-planet-with-giant-gun-thingy and fire away. But then the movie would be over and we’ve only seen three of the billion easter eggs so far. Instead, the movie goes full ADHD, jumping between random planets to random characters, each with its own meaningless subplot that has no bearing whatsoever on Junior’s evil plan.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Mario (Chris Pratt) or Luigi (Charlie Day) yet. That’s because they are barely supporting characters in this mess. Same goes for Bowser. And Toad (Keegan-Michael Key). Mario and Luigi spent the vast majority of the movie wrangling Yoshi (Donald Glover), a little green dinosaur they found clogging a pipe, while trying to catch up to Peach and Toad. Toad is accompanying Peach because every hero (Peach) needs a sidekick (Toad) for comedic relief. Remember this as the two of them chase an easter egg who stole Toad’s easter-egg-filled backpack through a giant easter egg filled with other easter eggs. It’s funny because they need the easter eggs in the backpack to hire Fox McEasterEgg to fly through the remaining easter egg levels to get to the final easter egg boss.

If this movie has any redeeming qualities, it’s that (1) Jack Black doesn’t get to sing another horrific song at us (“Peaches” from the last film was the worst), and (2) that it’s so transparently geared exclusively toward preschoolers that we don’t have to put up with insulting attempts to pander to other ages. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still feel cinematically violated by this film, just as you would by a swarm of butthole spiders. That’s how the Bad Place works.

Rating: I don’t care how much your five-year-old enjoys this film; ask for all of your money back.