Three points right up top. One, I took mushrooms and a good amount of edibles before seeingThe Super Mario Bros. Movie. Two, I don’t own a car and did not drive myself there nor back. Three, I saw The Super Mario Bros. Movie late at night in a screening that, as far as I could tell, didn’t have any kids. I’m a dummy, not an idiot.
Oh, and I guess, four, I’m not suggesting anyone do what I did. I’m not recommending it. I’m not telling you to do what I did. Nor am I considering doing it again because I’m off of work at my main job this week. So.
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I decided to take mushrooms before seeing The Super Mario Bros. Movie for an important reason: because I could. While I’m going to die surrounded by the faces of doctors and nurses I don’t recognize, at least at the moment I don’t have any actual life responsibilities. My landlord won’t even let me get a f***ing dog. So, seeing a movie based on my childhood obsession while taking drugs to artificially induce a childlike state felt like a good idea. And it was. Kind of. Somewhat.
I wasn’t expecting some sort of transcendent hallucinatory experience. Despite what movies and television have promised over the years, I’ve found that my experience with mushrooms has ranged from ‘Colors are brighter’ to ‘I’ve got a stomach ache and colors are brighter’. This isn’t LSD; I wasn’t going to think I was an unseen Wario going on an adventure with Mario, Peach, and Toad.
I was simply expecting to enjoy myself a bit more and relax out the cynicism that has been hardwired into my brain over the last 20 years of adulthood. My greatest family breakthrough came when my sister and I went to Disneyland and took edibles. That’s not even a joke. We figured shit out that stuck. So I didn’t want to see the movie as the bitter, hate-filled man I am. I wanted to see the movie as the bitter, hate-filled child I used to be. Unfortunately, that required me exploring gray area legalities. Which, again, I don’t recommend anyone doing. Don’t get your ass in trouble because I’ve got low morals and lower tastes.
The good news is the mushrooms and edibles started to have an effect just as I was sitting down in the theater. The bad news is the couple next to me was having the loudest silent fight of all time. You ever see a couple argue in public with full-on wild gestures while whispering shit at each other? That was this couple. I wasn’t so far gone that I was imagining this, either. When you come from a rough childhood, you know when two people are angry - even when they’re just staring forward and clenching and unclenching their hands.
I spent the first ten or fifteen minutes of the movie watchingSuper Mariowith one half of my brain and hoping the couple next to me would calm the f*** down with the other half. Eventually, as the movie went on, they did. Or the drugs hit even harder and my focus was pulled by the thing I had actually wanted to see since I was a child: Mario on screen being Mario.
I got lost in it, and I loved it. I don’t even think it was the drugs. I think it was that I was watching a Mario movie in which Mario moved and acted like Mario. They did it in a universe that didn’t need to explain itself. They didn’t try to justify the existence of power-ups. They didn’t try to paint some epic picture of the past. There was no prophecy. It was just the Mushroom Kingdom, and that’s what it was. It felt like watching someone play a great Mario game.
Yes, I understand that it’s not the greatest cinematic experience of all time. But if I want to watch a movie do something subverted with a video game to enhance a narrative experience, I’ll watch Tár. That’s actually a good movie! I wasn’t paying for something that would change my view of the human condition. I was paying for the artist formerly known as Jump Man jumping and hitting blocks. Amen.
If anything, the mushrooms and edibles helped clarify the purpose of this mission. The broad strokes of cynicism I felt were stripped away. Of course, I didn’t sail through the movie without being annoyed by anything. I’m not always a big fan of pop songs in fantastical animated movies - especially in something like Mario which already has such a deep bench of music. But that stylistic ship has long sailed. I didn’t care. I cared about watching Mario parkour.
As I watched, I remembered my obsession with Super Mario as a kid. How this world felt strange and new when I was four. How the short, fat Mario felt relatable to me as a short, fat kid. The excitement that ran through my veins whenMario Kart 64came out. The feeling of exploration and sheer wonder in Mario 64. You could argue these are all pleasant memories of shallow consumerism - but we’re on a video game site, folks. Half of us own statues and Lego sets of characters from video games.
Perhaps it sounds like I’m saying I had to dumb myself down - or numb myself down - to enjoy the experience. Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. I can’t argue that I didn’t want to think too hard on a Friday night while eating loaded fries at the Alamo Drafthouse. But I did want a chance to cut through the bullshit too-online brain I’ve developed. I wanted my imagination to run away with Mario. That’s what I did. My imagination flew. Corny, but true.
When I got home, the first thing I did was boot up Mario 64. I spent the rest of the night replaying greatest hits levels from the entire series. The movie made me want to be Mario again the same way The Super Mario Bros. Super Show made me want to be Mario when I was a child. I didn’t require drugs and a mainstream animated movie to remind me that I like Mario. But it did help remind me why I like Mario.
Oh, and the fighting couple? They resumed their argument during the credits while everyone was waiting for the promised post-credits scene. Huge bummers. Really hope whatever conflict they were having resolves because boy-oh-boy they’ve got problems, girl.
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