No generally the audience reception of the movie is good, a lot of people like it while the critics give it lukewarm reviews.
I am not really sure, they translated the games into a movie quite simplistically and while on the surface this is what they did, there is actually some depth to the Mario games that you don't really get in the movie but it is I guess a kids film, and thus as a kids film I think it probably suceeds it's goal. There is a story, though I guess there doesn't seem to be much depth to the film and like I though it's kind of style over substance and it felt a little empty to me, I mean it's not completely hollow but it's just lacking very much depth. There's not that much symbolism or metaphores or anything lke that. I guess it's because they had to make it really easy to digest for kids so a lot of possible story ideas had to be left out.
