Colony

I give this movie a seven because I think kids would really like it. When I first saw it in theaters, at the age of nine, I loved it, as did my younger brother.

I haven't seen it in years, but I do remember some great moments. The best one is Paul Reubens as an animal control official, who chases Dunston the Orangutan into a greenhouse. He fires his gun off and startles two old ladies sitting in an office, who then see him out a window looking into the greenhouse. For a few seconds the two ladies stare at him and he stares back. It's funny. The one kids will remember most will probably be Dunston jumping on Faye Dunaway and she falls backwards into a giant cake. Paul Reubens is definitely a highlight in this movie.

Like I said, I haven't seen the movie in years, and I imagine I would feel differently about it now. When I was a kid I didn't know that Faye Dunaway was a movie legend. Now that I've seen Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and Network, it might be a little weird seeing her in this role.

So I feel that the kids and the kid-like will enjoy this movie. The older people, probably not so much.

Fillmore is a show about a boy that used to be a troublemaker, but leaves a life of crime and joins the safety patrol. Where I went to school, the safety patrol would go out into the street with stop signs and help other kids cross the street, but at Fillmore's school, they seem to be the school police force.

Anyway, the show is a satire of real life detective shows, where Fillmore and his partner Ingrid must solve whatever case they must solve by the deadline forced upon them by the bitchy school principal. The show is pretty good actually. The mysteries are simple kids-stuff, but taken seriously to properly satirize the network crime dramas.

The show's biggest flaw, is that it sometimes becomes too serious. It's almost as if for a moment, the writers forgot that they are only making a satire of a crime drama and think that they are actually making a crime drama, and seeing that seriousness in a kids' cartoon is just plain ridiculous.

When the show remains faithful to what it is, it's very good work. It just has to remember what it is.

The truth about this movie is that it really isn't all that bad, it's just that this movie has so little to do with Super Mario Bros. other than the characters' names, it really isn't even a Super Mario Bros. Movie. It's just a movie that has Super Mario Bros. in the title.

Take Toad, in this movie. In the game, he was a cute little mushroom dude, in the movie, he's some weird guy who plays the guitar on the street and sings songs. And Bowser is not a menacing turtle-creature in this movie, he's a dude with funky ridges on his head.

This movie has an interesting plot, but no one will notice because they're too busy trying to figure out where the SMB stuff is at. Where are the funny-looking mushroom guys? The turtles with wings? Is that Yoshi? Why doesn't Mario ride him while he's slurping up enemies? Where are the perilous lava pits and the green mushrooms that give you extra lives? And where the hell is Kuribo's Shoe?

The movie would have been better off if they had just done away with the SMB license and released it as an original movie. So, if you want, you can see it, but try to imagine that it's not a Super Mario Bros. movie.