You may remember that I have an Odeon MyLimitless+ membership, which entitles the bearer to watch any film at the Odeon for free. You may also remember my previously writing about the fact that this has fostered a healthy attitude of taking risks on films I might otherwise have missed, and of not minding so much when I watch a film I don’t like very much, as it didn’t really cost me any money. Rarely has this philosophy been put to the test quite so much as it was by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, an irritating farrago of a film which caused me to leave the cinema feeling depressed.

It’s strange to feel depressed while watching candy-hued representations of Mario and Luigi turning into babies while Yoshi turns blue and inflates like a balloon and floats around Bowser’s head. It’s the sort of imagery that should make you feel sick, like you’ve overdosed on sugar (which incidentally I did – I had a feeling the film might be shit, so I spent £5 on a tub of children’s sweets to make the experience more enjoyable, which I proceeded to eat all of despite the fact that the sugar played havoc with my guts and made me fart all through dinner). You shouldn’t be watching that kind of thing and feeling completely numb, but I did.

Mario and Luigi, who are ostensibly the heroes of the film, are reintroduced doing wheelies on motorbikes in the desert while shouting “Yoo-hoo!” at each other before they stop and have this exchange. Remember these are the protagonists, and this is the first scene of dialogue the writer decided to give them to set up their arc and explain to us where they’re at in this movie:

MARIO – Wow, Lou, that wheelie you did back there was amazing!

LUIGI – Hahaha! What are we, some kind of motorcycle guys now?

MARIO – Obviously!

That’s it. That’s the scene. Then they go into a pyramid and find Yoshi hiding in a pipe. Yoshi does precisely fuck all to impact the story throughout the film, by the way. Nor does Mario, if we’re being completely honest.

Anyway, look, I didn’t start writing this piece to slag it off, honestly I didn’t. What I found weird was that after this terrible film ended, I still felt compelled to sit through the entire end credits for upwards of five minutes in case Wario and Waluigi showed up in a post-credits scene. They don’t, so obviously I was even more pissed off than before (somebody else does, but I won’t say who because I’d hate this newsletter to diminish your enjoyment of the film).

Crossing fingers for Wario

Since then, I haven’t been able to stop wondering about something. I am not an avowed fan of the Super Mario Bros. franchise. I’ve rarely played the games outside of obligatory rounds of Mario Kart at parties and a semi-regular hangout in my teens where every few months me and two other schoolfriends would get naked in my friend’s garage and play the arcade game Mario Party (long story, this, and it’s for another time, but in a nutshell – we thought we were being cool and outrageous like something out of American Pie, but never really realised that it was actually quite weird and a bit sad given that there were only three of us and none of us were romantically interested in each other, so we were just three naked boys sat in sleeping bags trying to make Donkey Kong win a dancing contest).

Despite this, I have long had a genuine affection, nay, obsession with Wario and Waluigi, and since watching the film I keep trying to work out why. I love them. I think they’re brilliant. I don’t even know much about them, I just love their vibe. So over the weekend I did a bit of research to find out a bit more about who they are and am absolutely gobsmacked by what I learned.

For the uninitiated, Wario and Waluigi are sort of bizarro, inverse versions of Mario and Luigi. Everything they do is the opposite of what the Mario Brothers do. So, whereas the Mario Brothers’ intentions generally sit somewhere on the scale between altruistic and heroic, Wario and Waluigi’s actions are always evil at worst and sneaky at best. They’re not particularly physically similar to Mario and Luigi, except that one is short and stocky and the other is tall and lanky. They are quite physically similar to one another, in that they both have brown hair and black facial hair and they both have a bright pink nose, but apparently they are not related. According to my research, while Wario was a sort of dark rival of Mario’s who knew him in childhood, Waluigi was just a guy he met as an adult and teamed up with. I think this is incredible, and I can’t stop trying to wrap my head around it to understand how it happened. It must have been something like this:

WALUIGI – Hey man, nice to meet you. My name’s Waluigi.

WARIO – Oh hey, that’s funny, my name also starts with Wa.

WALUIGI – Oh yeah?

WARIO – Yeah, my name’s Wario.

WALUIGI – Stop.

WARIO – What?

WALUIGI – Shut up. You’re pulling on one of my famously long legs.

WARIO – No. What? What’s so funny?

WALUIGI – Your name is really similar to the name of this guy who is the brother of a guy I hate.

WARIO – That sounds kind of tenuous, why are you telling me that?

WALUIGI – Ah, it’s silly, you’ll probably laugh at me.

WARIO – No, no, you seem cool, I’m not gonna laugh at you.

WALUIGI – Promise?

WARIO – I promise.

WALUIGI – Well it’s just that this guy, I kind of define myself by my hatred of him. Like, the ways in which I dislike him are really key to my sense of identity so I think about him and his brother a lot.

WARIO – No way! I define myself by my hatred of this guy who has a similar name to me too, and he also has a brother!

WALUIGI – Hold on, hold on, this is getting weird. Let’s count down from three and then say the name of the brothers we hate.

WARIO – Ok, this is fun! 3…

WALUIGI – 2…

WARIO – 1…

WARIO & WALUIGI – The Super Mario Brothers!

WARIO – No waaaayyy!

WALUIGI – That’s craaaaaazy!

WARIO – So you hate Luigi?

WALUIGI – Yeah. You hate Mario?

WARIO – Can’t stand the guy.

WALUIGI – That’s mad. I can’t believe that.

WARIO – What a coincidence! Was your name already Waluigi, or…?

WALUIGI – Yeah, I think maybe that’s why I don’t like him. Because, like, his name is similar to my name but he’s really famous and stuff.

WARIO – Right. So if you ever try to google yourself, he comes up instead.

WALUIGI – Well not really, because my name has “Wa” at the front of it, so it is actually quite a different name. But I can definitely see how that would be a problem for you.

WARIO – It’s a nightmare.

WALUIGI – Wow, how funny.

(Pause)

WALUIGI – Do you wanna dress like them?

WARIO – What?

WALUIGI – Oh. Sorry. Was that a weird suggestion?

WARIO – Err. I dunno if I fully understand the idea yet. What are you thinking?

WALUIGI – I was thinking…ahh, no, it’s stupid.

WARIO – No no, say it, it sounded interesting. I’m genuinely interested.

WALUIGI – I thought that maybe we could dress like they dress. Like, the same clothes but with our own colour schemes.

WARIO – Ok. So dungarees and hats, but not red and green?

WALUIGI – Yeah. Yellow and purple.

WARIO – Because those are opposites on the colour wheel just like red and green are.

WALUIGI – Really? Oh I was just making shit up off the top of my head.

WARIO – Well you have an innate understanding of colour theory.

WALUIGI – Oh thanks. Oh, and obviously we wouldn’t have M and L written on our hats. Like, you would have a W on yours and…

WARIO – Yeah, and you can have an upside-down L on yours.

WALUIGI – What?

WARIO – Well a W is an upside-down M, so…that kind of makes sense.

WALUIGI – Does it? An upside-down L isn’t really a thing. Maybe we could just both have Ws, because my name also begins with Wa.

WARIO – I think that’s diluting the brand. Cos we’d be sort of like the opposite of them, right?

WALUIGI – What?

WARIO – Well would we behave like we were the opposite of them? Is that the idea?

WALUIGI – I was really just thinking of making ourselves look like them. Like, to annoy them. What’s your idea?

WARIO – Oh, maybe it’s stupid.

WALUIGI – No no, I wanna hear it.

WARIO – Ok, well your idea made me think that maybe we could do the opposite of everything they do. Like, instead of being heroic all the time, we could be sneaky.

WALUIGI – Sneaky?

WARIO – Yeah. Or evil, or whatever.

WALUIGI – You want us to be evil?

WARIO – Like, evil versions of them.

WALUIGI – Right. To annoy them?

WARIO – Yeah, and, like, ruin their reputation.

WALUIGI – Ok. But we’re not impersonating them, right? Or are we?

WARIO – No, because our colour schemes are gonna be different. And we’ve got different names, because we’ve both got Wa at the start of our names.

WALUIGI – Right. So we’re not really ruining their reputation, are we? We’re just sort of building our own reputation.

WARIO – Yeah. Ok.

WALUIGI – And our reputation is gonna be that we’re sneaky and evil and we look like them.

WARIO – Yeah.

(Pause)

WALUIGI – I’m getting really confused about what we’re trying to achieve here.

WARIO – Yeah, no, it is confusing.

(Pause)

WARIO – We could call ourselves the Sneaky Wario Brothers.

WALUIGI – I think we should call ourselves Wario and Waluigi.

WARIO – Ok.

(Pause)

WALUIGI – It’s crazy that you also have a pink nose.

It’s even crazier that I wrote all of that out. Why did I do it? I just needed to get it out of my system, I guess, and writing it out here means I can spare myself the indignity of filming it as a social media sketch and going out and buying stuff to make me look like Wario and Waluigi, although I do need to do that anyway for reasons that will become clear in the fullness of time.

Look, the real reason I’m sending this newsletter is as a thinly disguised final plug for the FINAL London run of You Wait. Time Passes, which is back at Soho Theatre for four more nights this week, starting tomorrow! It’s selling well, but eight nights in total in their Downstairs space is more tickets than I’ve ever had to sell for a show in London before, so it can use all the support it can get! If there are any readers who are thinking of coming but haven’t booked yet, I’d love you to come along if you can, and if there are any readers who saw the show and enjoyed it then I’d love you to spread the word. After this there are no plans for it to be performed in London again, so this week is really the last big push! I’m so proud of this show and all we’ve achieved with it, and I’d love to bring it home with a bang.

None of that had anything to do with Wario or Waluigi or the Mario Galaxy Movie, though, so I guess I’d better now tie the disparate threads of this newsletter into one satisfying whole that makes it less obvious that I just sat down and did some free associative writing as a precursor to plugging the show.

Look, guys, I think Wario and Waluigi are cute. I think it’s cute the way Mario and Luigi inspired their creativity the way they did, even if that creativity emerged as a concerted effort to irritate and undermine them by pretending to be their evil counterparts. You can never predict the ways in which an act of creative expression ripples out into the world, or how and when those ripples are gonna come back to you. I guess what I’m saying is, if anyone wants to come and watch the show wearing all red linen with a white headband, and then at the end of the show come onstage and challenge me by doing what they believe to be the opposite of my show, then I think that’d be really cool.

Phew, nailed it.

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – A bunch of Edinburgh Fringe shows went on sale last week, including the three I’m working on this year – Anna Leong Brophy’s Born Sexy Yesterday; Emmeline Downie’s Gail; and Alice Fraser’s Oh Man! They’re all such brilliant shows already, get booking for them.

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – Something from the movie Splitsville, for sure. Either the rollercoaster scene or the fight scene or the bit with the lemon.

Book Of The Week – I was thinking of changing my Word For The Year to Calm for this year, because I decided I really want to have a very calm year. No stress, no panic, just trusting in all the good things. Then I stumbled across the HQ of the School of Life in Amsterdam and found them selling a book of theirs called Calm, and thought it was a sign that I should buy it and read it next. It’s really good so far, and focuses largely on not trying to purge or remove panicked or stressed thoughts, but to pay attention to where they come from and what underpins them. It’s helping!

Album Of The Week – Ambiguous Desire by Arlo Parks. I think I enjoy this slightly less than her last two albums, but it’s still a very lush and beguiling listen – sort of downtempo dance-pop for woozing about to, if you like woozing about. Do you know what I mean by woozing about? Slowly swaying while looking out the window thinking about stuff.

Film Of The Week – Splitsville, which I loved so much – thanks to Luke Rollason for recommending it! It’s a comedy about two couples who start experimenting with ethical non-monogamy, and it’s so funny and well-written and acted. It’s written by two of its stars, Kyle Marvin and Michael Angelo Covino, and directed by Covino. I didn’t know of their work before but it feels like the kind of character-driven passion project that I’m always so happy to stumble across and wish we still saw more frequently. The whole fight sequence is astonishing and had me in bits. Go see it!

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to recommend it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it!

Take care of yourselves,

Joz xx

PS Feel free to send me a tip on Ko-Fi if you enjoy my work and would like to support me to keep making it!

PPS Thanks to Miranda for making me look beautiful in the Isabella Plantation over the Easter weekend:

Click here to go back