On the eve of its 30th birthday, Super Mario Bros.––the 1993 film, not the groundbreaking video game––might be due for critical reappraisal. Dubbed “a complete waste of time and money” by Roger Ebert, rejected by Mario’s custodians at Nintendo, and described with utter contempt by its own stars, it has enjoyed three decades of cultural life as a punchline about the dismal standards of game-to-movie adaptations. Yet the tonally confused kids’ movie, viewed in retrospect of a fully Marvelized Hollywood, recalls a time when genuinely weird, mutant art could sometimes break out of the franchise-blockbuster laboratories. Directed by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, the spousal duo behind cult cyberpunk sensation Max Headroom, it liberally reimagines the vaguely defined Mario lore of plumbers, princesses, mushrooms, and dinosaurs into a gothic urban fever dream. Pursuing a kidnapped girl, the titular brothers––Bob Hoskins as Mario, adopting a wheezing, gesticulating meatball...