Ok listen, I love Mario so this isn't just me hating on the franchise or anything.
The fact that i love the franchise so much is probably why i am giving this a low rating.
The biggest problem was that the characters weren't true to their canonical personality in the videogames.
Toad was always afraid, peach was a damsel in distress, and Mario and Luigi were valient heros, not some musky guys who seemed so limited in so many ways.
They should have kept the original characters and made a story that worked around them. It could have been great to stick to a traditional story.
Also really? A human universe tied in to this movie? Alongside being completely unecessary, it made Mario seem like he didn't belong in the videogame universe. It took away so much from what could have been a bolder plot solely within the videogame universe. I mean, the whole movie is supposed to be ABOUT that. They could have spent more time adding more meaningful elements like yoshi, better story elements, and more character development.
The music. Good grief. Why was there so much random music from the 80s? It was, unecessary as best but completely out of place.
The movie was not well paced at all. There was different scene about every minute on average. It seemed less about the story developing naturally, and more about pushing it through steps. An extra 10 minutes would have been great, and -15 in the human world. That's 25 more minutes of content, and character development.
Bowser was ok though, and so was donkey Kong. They were quite canonical.
Oh well, this movie isn't what i would have hoped for in a Mario movie. It was a let down, I wish that it had just been in the Mario universe.