Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros.

Riffed by	RiffTrax
Riffers	Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett
Series	None
Date Released	March 21, 2014

Super Mario Bros. is a 1993 American science fiction fantasy adventure comedy film directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. A loose live-action adaptation of the 1985 Nintendo video game of the same name, the film stars Bob Hoskins as Mario, John Leguizamo as Luigi, Dennis Hopper as King Koopa, and Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy. It tells the story of the Mario brothers, as they find a parallel universe, where King Koopa is a dictator. They have to rescue Princess Daisy and stop Koopa from attempting to merge the dimensions so that he could become a dictator of both worlds. RiffTrax released their riff in March 2014. It was voted 2nd Place in the RiffWiki.net Riff of the Year competition.

Synopsis and Preview[]

[Spoilers Begin]

Super_Mario_Bros._(RiffTrax_Trailer) — Super Mario Bros. (RiffTrax Trailer)

Mario and Luigi are two Italian American plumbers living in Brooklyn. The brothers are being driven out of business by the mafia-like Scapelli Construction Company, led by contractor Anthony Scapelli. Luigi falls in love with an orphaned NYU student, Daisy, who is digging under the Brooklyn Bridge for dinosaur bones. After a date, she takes Luigi to the dig and witnesses Scapelli's men (who, along with Scapelli himself, had previously threatened her to end her research on that specific piece of land for their own interests) sabotage it by leaving the water-pipes open. Luigi tries to stop it but he does not have his tools on him so he cannot fix it. They rush back to his apartment where they inform Mario about the incident. The three go back to the flooding and the brothers manage to fix it but are knocked out by two strange characters, Iggy and Spike, who proceed to kidnap Daisy.

Mario and Luigi awaken a minute later and head deeper into the caves following Daisy's screams and discover an interdimensional portal through which Mario and Luigi follow Daisy. They find themselves in a strange dystopian parallel world where a human-like race evolved from dinosaurs rather than the mammalian ancestry of true humans in a Manhattan-like city. Sixty-five million years ago, a meteorite crashed into the Earth and in doing so ripped the universe into two parallel dimensions. All the surviving dinosaurs of the time crossed over into this new realm. Iggy and Spike turn out to be henchmen (and cousins) of the other world's germophobic and obsessive dictator, King Koopa, descended from the T-Rex. However, the two have failed to also bring Daisy's rock, a meteorite fragment which Koopa is trying to get in order to merge his world with the real world that separated from Koopa's world during the meteor strike. It turns out that Daisy is the Princess of the other dimension but when Koopa overthrew Daisy's father (and turned him into fungus), Daisy's mother took her to New York using the inter-dimensional portal. The portal was then destroyed, killing Daisy's mother in the process, but when Scapelli was blasting at the cave, the portal was reopened. When Koopa hears about the re-opening of the portal, he sends Spike and Iggy to find Daisy and the rock to merge the dimensions and make Koopa dictator of both worlds. Spike and Iggy, however, who had grown more intelligent after being subjected to one of Koopa's experiments, decide to turn on Koopa and join forces with Mario and Luigi. Koopa thinks only Daisy can merge the worlds, but Mario and Luigi were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Daisy is eventually rescued by the plumbers, along with the help of Toad, a man punished by Koopa for performing music protesting his reign, then condemned to be "devolved" into a Goomba.

Eventually, the two worlds merge and Koopa inadvertently devolves Scapelli into a primate while aiming for Mario, but Luigi and Daisy take back the rock and the worlds separate again. Mario confronts Koopa and eventually wins when he and Luigi devolve him, transforming him into a ferocious, semi-humanoid Tyrannosaurus. Koopa then leaps out for a final attack but Mario and Luigi destroy him by devolving him further into primeval slime. Daisy's father turns back to normal and reclaims control over the kingdom stating he loves those plumbers. The citizens destroy anything involving Koopa. As the brothers return home, Luigi and Daisy admit their love for one another but Daisy cannot return to New York until the damage caused by Koopa is reversed and she spends more time with her father. Mario rephrases Daisy's words to Luigi but he does not care. A deeply hurt and saddened Luigi kisses her goodbye and the two brothers return to New York, while Daisy watches them leave. About three weeks later, Daisy returns for Mario and Luigi's help in fighting more villains. Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi's story is televised, giving them the name: "Super Mario Bros."

In a post-credits scene, two Japanese business executives talk about making a video game based on Iggy and Spike, who decide on the title: "The Super Koopa Cousins".

[Spoilers End]

Cast and Crew[]

Bob Hoskins as Mario Mario

John Leguizamo as Luigi Mario

Dennis Hopper as King Koopa

Samantha Mathis as Princess Daisy

Fisher Stevens as Iggy

Richard Edson as Spike

Fiona Shaw as Lena

Mojo Nixon as Toad

Dana Kaminski as Daniella

Francesca Roberts as Big Bertha

Lance Henriksen as The King

Quotes[]

Notes[]

A short clip of this riff played on IGN as part of RiffTrax's worst movies of all time list in December 2012, even though the full riff wasn't released until March 2014.
Gene Siskel picked this movie in "The Worst Films of 1993" special on At the Movies.

Gallery[]

External Links[]

Super Mario Bros. on RiffTrax