We’re less than a week away from the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a motion picture that will do unto the portfolios of Comcast shareholders what a super mushroom does to the titular acrobatic plumber in the game upon which the film is based. (Enlarge is what we’re going for here, on the off-chance you’ve never picked up a Nintendo controller.)
Chris Pratt, who voices the lead role in the kid-friendly animated action-adventure flick, is on the campaign trail, and he stopped at Rockefeller Center to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday. He didn’t just do an interview on the couch, however. He found himself engaged in one of Jimmy Fallon’s corny-and-yet-I-can-not-turn-away bits, strapped in for a round of video game trivia opposite the show’s host, both with toilet plungers on their heads. Glamor profession!
Tonight Show announcer Steve Higgins acted as quizmaster, firing off button-mashing questions to both men as they sat in barber chairs beneath Mario-esque green pipes. The loser, it was promised, would have stuff rain upon them. (Alas, those looking for a You Can’t Do That on Television-style slime attack had to settle for some golden confetti.)
What follows in the bit is clear: Pratt’s knowledge of video games is pretty mid-tier. He got the ultra-easy ones (like naming one of the first six games inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame) but when it came to listing the last of the Pac-Man ghosts he whiffed it.
Fallon got that one wrong, too, but at least was in the ballpark—knowing it was some random dude’s name. (He failed to recall that name was Clyde.) Moreover, he was able to pull the name Miyamoto out of his ear when asked to name the creator of Donkey Kong.
While Pratt didn’t exactly fail here—it wasn’t like he got stung on the eyeball by a bee after poking its hive—Fallon performed more honorably. We therefore salute him, so long as we don’t have to get off the couch until we finish one more level.
Considering the massive love for the property and that the same studio behind Minions is pushing it, all signs point to Pratt and The Super Mario Bros. Movie having a tremendous hit and robust franchise on their hands. However, we would be remiss if we did not bring up the 1993 version of this story, which starred Bob Hoskins, Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo, and Samantha Mathis. Whether or not Super Mario Bros. is actually good or just insane remains open to debate. One thing is for certain: nothing Pratt or anyone else will ever do to promote the new project will touch this clip of Hoskins from back in the day.
Jordan Hoffman
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