RUTHFULLY YOURS

Weirdness and deviancy may make headlines — maybe because they are weird and deviant — but most Americans — indeed most people — want to relax and enjoy with friends and family a bit of fantasy to which they can relate.  Perhaps that is why the opening of Super Mario Bros. Movie has smashed box-office records.

‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Box Office: All the Records Smashed on Opening Weekend

It’s-a blockbuster! “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” an animated adventure based on the classic video game, crushed the competition with its jaw-dropping $204.6 million domestic and $377 million global debut over the long Easter weekend.

Those results far exceeded expectations and even surpassed the starts of recent installments in Universal’s biggest franchises, like “Jurassic World Dominion” ($145 million domestically) and “Fast and Furious 9” ($70 million). So, expect a sequel to be announced faster than you can say “Let’s-a go!”

“The box office just kept growing and growing,” marvels Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution. “It’s a tremendous worldwide debut, and the movie has a clear runway.”

And not only families with youngsters showed up, this non-niche movie was resonating with males and females, young and old, who grew up with Mario, Luigi, and other inhabitants of the fantastical Mushroom Kingdom.

So, a movie about loving minority brothers — okay, ethnic Italian-Americans with mustaches and dark hair named Mario and Luigi — and their fantastical adventures based on a video game, is relatable not only to Americans of all ages, economic, social and other categories but also to people around the world.  Interestingly, while the professional movie reviewers humpfed.

While it’s nowhere near as thrilling as turtle tipping your way to 128 lives, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a colorful — albeit thinly plotted — animated adventure that has about as many Nintendos as Nintendon’ts and received a lowly 56% on Rottten Tomatoes’ critics score sheet they also grudgingly admitted that the movie rated an incredibly high 96% audience approval rating.

There is a lesson in this popularity to all the petty squabblers at the UN, or indeed to those who seek to divide us based on differences.  While our differences our real, there is more that unites us.  And that unity is not to be found in such phony venues as the United Nations but in the capitalistic, free-market businesses where people work hard to manufacture and produce what people want so they can make a profit.

Super!