Was a reviewer who said that it was made worse than if AI had made it which is a crazy insulting statement, not least because the movie looks absolutely fantastic. Just really absurd hatred in these reviews, honestly. 

I'm sorry, but did we watch the same movie? Maybe I'm getting old, but I had a feeling they changed writers multiple times in the middle of production - and they were all high on Adderall. Very rarely do I get annoyed while watching a movie, but this one managed to pulled all the right strings for me. Long story short, thanks to this clusterf&*$% of a story, it was just mid. The first one was so much better.

Here's the one I was talking about:

"This movie was written by AI. That is actually a FACT (allegedly). Of course they are going to make a sequel this is a huge franchise that will get viewers even if it sucks and is AI written SLOP."

Actually a fact, allegedly? That sounds contradictory.

Just watched the movie, and honestly it was incredibly mid. And this is coming from someone who overall enjoyed the first one.

This movie felt more like they just wanted to stuff the movie with so much fan service, but at the expense of an incredibly thin forgettable plot and poor pacing.

Im obviously not expecting the most interesting plot in the world out of a Mario movie, especially from a game series known to be safe when it comes to its story and for a movie meant for kids to enjoy, but even with that expectation in mind its story felt too uninteresting overall and something I wouldn't really care to revisit or watch again. The first movie, while having a relatively simple plot, still had a decently interesting story and was more memorable for me.

In terms of the good parts of the movie, yea all the cameos and references were cool, but they banked on that too much to carry the movie. The animation was beautiful and it was cool watching some of the fight sequences, but the action sequences took up too much of the movie which didn't allow the plot to develop or get very interesting.

I think this movie is good enough for kids to watch to keep em busy, they'll be easily entertained by this movie, and maybe even adults once. But it's definitely not one of those movies I could see one wanting to revisit and think "hey, lets watch this movie again". It felt incredibly safe and forgettable.