Negative 'Mario' Movie Review Roasted Not For Its Opinion, But For Comparing The Movie To An 'Unplugged Game Boy'

A potential new gold standard in immediately invalidating one's own opinion dropped two weeks ago when Canadian news outlet CTV news wrote a middling review of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and led with the witticism, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie has all the charm of an unplugged Game Boy."

The Super Mario Bros. Movie hasn't exactly dazzled critics, even as general audiences have been more receptive, so it's no surprise that a lukewarm review of the film attracted some negative attention from its fans.

However, in this case, the negative attention often focused on a very basic error made by the piece's author, Richard Crouse, as the Nintendo Game Boy ran on batteries (and always has). There is no such thing as an "unplugged Game Boy."

The error shot through subreddits focusing on cringe, as it was immortalized in posts on /r/facepalm, /r/fellowkids and /r/brandnewsentence.

The piece's headline was later corrected to read, "'The Super Mario Bros. Movie' delivers what Nintendo has been successfully doling out for 40 years," but the damage had already been done. Furthermore, some users thought the correction ended up neutering the piece, as it reads much more positively than what the failed "unplugged Game Boy" joke was trying to achieve.

The incident is yet another example of fans feeling vindicated when there's an apparent difference between critics' opinions about a piece of media and their own. It should also be a lesson to media outlets that when assigning reviews about video game properties, hand it to the biggest gamer in the office.