Look, I'm just gonna say it. Rip that band-aid right off. Come right out with it. No holding back. You ready? I really mean it this time. I'm going to say it. For real, now. Okay? No fooling. No way around it. Ugh. Okay, here goes - I like Chris Pratt's Mario voice. There, you happy?! I'm as surprised as the rest of you, really. I still think it's weird to not use Charles Martinet when he's right there and clearly wants to be involved in the movie, and I'm not Pratt's biggest fan either as a movie star or as a person. But it's... fine, right? Better than fine. I think it's quite good. Mama mia, I think Chris Pratt's a good Mario.
No, he's not doing an Italian accent. He's doing a Brooklyn accent, just like the Mario television show and the last Mario movie. I think, more broadly, it's an odd cultural quirk of the USA for people to say "I'm Italian" when they mean "my great great grandfather was Italian, but I was born in the USA and have never left my home state", but that's just me. Mario is as Italian as about 50,000 guys in New Yawk who swear they're Italian, so this is what we get. And it's not Pratt's normal voice. It's clearly a Brooklyn accent, which Pratt does not have. You may not like the voice, or not like Pratt and have that be enough to put you off, but I feel like it's a deliberate attempt to gaslight me specifically for you to say he's not even doing a voice.
Pratt has form in this area. He's great in The Lego Movie, where he does a similar job to what he will be tasked with in The Super Mario Bros. Movie of carrying the plot along while more eccentric voice actors around him add the excitement and texture. He's even back with Charlie Day as Luigi, who played Benny in Lego. As frustrating as it may be, given how his popularity has dipped off-screen, Pratt knows his job is to carry, crack a few jokes, and let others around him shine. It's what he does in Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World, The Lego Movie, and even the likes of Passengers. Onward wasn't his greatest moment, as the script leaned too hard into the commercial image of Pratt as a loveable schlubb after we had fallen out of love with him, but Mario seems more like his comfort zone.
In some ways, Pratt is a victim of circumstance. He came up as a chubby comedy star, and in dropping the weight for Guardians, he was the best of both worlds at the time when he had every quality a film star needed. He was charismatic, relatable, and at the time when Whedonised 'uh... that just happened' dialogue was in vogue, he was the master of it. He tied connection with the audience, comedy chops, and action star sensibilities together perfectly. Chris Hemsworth, a fellow Marvel Chris, struck gold with the same technique at the same time. Now, their stars are fading. Audiences are tired of that style of comedy, Pratt has been in shape too long to be relatable in that way, and his other forms of charming, down to Earth relatability don't really exist anymore.
Established celebrities don't get to be relatable. They get money, and we get to not like them. That's the deal. We are living in a time of huge wealth disparity, and we don't want celebrities to be our friends anymore. As I wrote earlier this year, when Pratt's PR team went into damage control to repair his image, his era of celebrity is being replaced by breakout social media stars with a more authentic audience connection like Gracie Abrams or Abby Roberts.
Of course, in many more ways, Pratt is the victim of himself. While he's not responsible for broad sweeping trends in how we engage with celebrities as a culture, he is responsible for his attendance of the Hillsong-adjacent Zoe Church, for mealy mouthed 'I love all people' responses to questions of Hillsong's homophobia, and for his public support for Libertarian agendas and slogans. Some criticism has been a little over the top (he was once embroiled in criticism for saying he opens pickle jars for his wife), but they come from a place of resentment that Pratt has gradually built up as he has destroyed his good guy image. When he's not starring in blockbusters, he's playing military hardasses in direct-to-streaming titles that seem to be preparing him for a post-stardom role as a darling of the American right.
None of this really matters for his Mario voice. It matters for how much you may wish to support him, or even see the movie at all, but I can't keep it bottled up any longer. Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach gets me front row day one, or rather a few rows back because the front row hurts my neck. I thought Pratt was going to be something to endure in the movie, as he felt at times in the Jurassic trilogy. But he's a great Mario for the American-Italian direction the movie has gone in, is showing decent range in the few clips so far and is shaping up to be an excellent centrepiece of the movie while the rest of the cast shine around him. I like Chris Pratt's Mario. There, I said it.