The Art of Enjoyment
or, a case study in criticism
I used to be smarter.
But I also used to be meaner and angrier.
People change.
I often think that I used to be smarter because I did things that smart people did. I’d sit around and think about things. Think about the Big Questions. Ruminate on life, choice, and on and on. None of that made me happy, but happiness is a fool’s errand, and now I sit here as a Fool.
A whole head full of empty.
More Mario:
When my son was four, I brought him to his very first theatre experience. It was for the Mario Movie. We went to this movie and not another because I had just spent the previous year playing all the 2D Mario games with him.
mario, daddy
I remember Mario the same way I remember my siblings. They’ve always been with me, since memory first sparked and began eating itself like Jörmungandr. I’ve been thinking a lot about Mario, which I’ve only been doing because I’ve been playing a lot of Mario with my son, which I do because I love him and myself.
We got popcorn and a drink and we sat down to experience Mario as big as a house on the screen. To my surprise, there was a lot of chatter among the types to chatter on the world wide web about how terrible the Mario movie was. How it was pandering or how it was a cash grab. I took in these opinions completely baffled.
And when someone I real lifingly know in real life mentioned that they didn’t like it, I looked upon this nearly forty year old man and said, “That’s because you didn’t see it with a four year old.”
I do not know what people expected out of something called The Super Mario Bros Movie, animated by the same studio that made Despicable Me, and with the backing of the company that’s made dozens of Mario games. But it felt to me that these adults wanted a movie for an adult, for the people who have been with the series since they were four years old.
It reminded me how Pokemon fans seem to hate Pokemon or how adult Star Wars fans cannot stop complaining about how Star Wars isn’t made with them in mind anymore.
But my son screamlaughed at certain parts. Standing on his seat just shrieking in delight.
That by itself was worth the admission cost.
As I said, I’m a big dummy. But when I put on my critical hat, I follow the Roger Ebert style of criticism.
Some of you may be too young to even know who that is since life keeps on going on whether we like it or not. But if you’re curious about film criticism or just criticism more broadly, then go read a dozen of his reviews.
What I always appreciated about Ebert is that he met movies where they were. He could give four stars to a movie like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, but also Risky Business or Peggy Sue Got Married.
That’s not to say that he thought all these movies were of the same quality or that any serious film curator needs to add The Little Mermaid to their lineup, but that he judged movies for what they were, with their own goal in mind.
Is Casablanca better than Dumb and Dumber?
Yeah, obviously. But Dumb and Dumber is also so perfectly what it is that I’d rate it very highly. Also, on any given day, I’d probably rather watch Dumb and Dumber. However, if I was writing a screenplay, I’d study Casablanca before I’d even consider looking at the Dumb and Dumber script.
This is also why I don’t write reviews of Marvel movies. Well, the main reason is that I don’t see them. But even if I did, I wouldn’t write them because these movies are just most certainly not for me and telling all the hundreds of millions of people who see and enjoy these movies that the movie sucks ass feels pointless, like a waste of time.
So do I think the Mario movie is the best movie of 2023?
No, definitely not. But we’ve watched it probably a dozen times now as a family and I just know that this movie is going to be in the bones of my sons. They love Mario and Luigi and Bowser. My eldest says the lines of dialogue along with the characters as they sit there on the couch letting it pour over them one more time.
And the reason I’m writing this now and not last year is because that word pandering keeps echoing in my dumb empty skull.
Pandering.
A children’s movie made for children about a character in a game made for children.
Pandering.
And I find myself asking if these people complain at the carnival, about the carnival barkers drawing crowds to their game. Do they go to an amusement part and scoff at the names of the rollercoasters?
You went by choice to see a movie about a video game about a plumber who fights a dragon turtle and you complain that it’s pandering.
What a misery.
What a joyless way to live life.
And, sure, you can compare it to Pixar movies like Up or Wall-E or non-Pixar movies like The Iron Giant or Anastasia and say that it doesn’t measure up, that children’s movies can be so much more.
But is that something you actually want from Mario?
Do you want to know the emotional contours of a plumber who jumps on turtles and mushroom shaped monsters scuttling across the screen?
And, yes, I agree. I want more movies like My Neighbor Totoro and The Book of Kells and on and on, but I also want more movies like Seven Samurai and In the Mood for Love.
But I don’t expect everything to be that. More than that, I don’t want everything to be that. I like that I can see Tommy Boy and laugh for two hours and then watch 3-Iron or Last Life in the Universe and cry like a dang baby.
I don’t want Jackie Chan movies to be Wong Kar Wai movies.
There’s no reason to turn off your critical hat or to constantly wear your goodtime hat, but I encourage you to at least try to meet art where it is. At least if you want to enjoy your life and the experience of being struck by art or to let it consume you like a rising tide to drown you. Or simply as a spectacle in the night.
Because every reference in the Mario movie people called pandering felt fun to me. Every little nugget dropped in my lap from a lifetime with Mario felt like friends quoting an old movie that they’d seen together a hundred times.
These panderings were invitations.
Open arms.
And, yeah, by all means, shove instead of hug.
But maybe that speaks more about you than anything else.
I think this a really inspirational essay, in the sense that I feel inspired to start my own Substack just to write a spiteful 2,000-word takedown of *your* essay >:D
Because, look, there are good things about 2023!Mario movie! The score is great, Illumination has an eye for color, Jack Black is having the time of his life as Bowser, whatever. But it is also a movie totally in the thrall of IP, and dedicated to cramming in as much I-Understood-That-Reference content as possible. And, you know, I do in fact understand the references, so I can say "oh, that guy harassing them in the pizzeria is Foreman Spike, antagonist of the pre-'Super Mario Bros.' title 'Wrecking Crew,' ha ha." But... who cares? Is there anyone under the age of 40 who has actually played "Wrecking Crew," even? The film isn't *bad* because of that, but that's an early signal that this is a children's movie that isn't actually for children, IMO.
We've had two successful (financially, anyway) movies adapted from Nintendo games, this and Detective Pikachu. The latter is an artistically successful movie, IMO, but that's obvious in hindsight because the films are based on very different franchises! The premise of Pokemon - imagine a world where you coexist with and befriend magical creatures! - is flattened by the rules of JRPGs into a string of nonstop combat scenarios interrupted by the occasional "feed Bulbasaur muffins" minigame; the joy promised by Pokemon can only be fulfilled by animation and narrative storytelling. Whereas the iconography of Mario games (pipes, ? blocks, mushrooms, coins) is, well, iconic, but it's also arbitrary and nonsensical outside the world of video games - the Mario games are a series of technicolor obstacle courses with no pretense of realism beyond "fuck it, let's make a fun video game." (Except Odyssey - which in going all-in on photorealism for everyone *except* Mario makes it obvious just how deliberately silly Mario and his world are.) Hence why the Pokemon anime is still popular in its six millionth season, whereas all the Mario TV shows are unwatchable kitsch coasting on the recognizability of the [?] sprite.
It's interesting because I struggled to enjoy ACOTAR the way others do, and hearing my best friend say, "It doesn't have to be well written to be enjoyable," really helped it make sense to me. All of those romantasy books deliver on what women want to read, and they do it in ways that are predictable, building anticipation in the readers from the very first chapter. Full fan service.