When the trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie finally hit a morbidly curious internet, it certainly had its work cut out for it. After all, it goes without saying that fans have not exactly been stoked about the casting of Chris Pratt as everybody’s favorite Goomba-stomping plumber. And, suffice to say, that anti-hype did indeed come to fruition when it was revealed that Pratt’s Mario voice wasn’t so much as “It’s a-me, Chris Pratt” as: “It’s me, Chris Pratt.”
But lack of discernible accent, character voice, or literally any semblance of effort aside, some fans online think they’ve noticed a similarity between Pratt’s Mario and another iconic animated character in red — Linda Belcher from Fox’s beloved animated comedy Bob’s Burgers, who is voiced by 50-year-old actor and comedian John Roberts.
Seriously though — anyone who doubts need only just close their eyes and listen to the following soundbite. You can definitely hear it, right??
So maybe “a gay man doing the voice of a middle-aged wife and mother of three” wasn’t the Mario we were expecting, but it’s the one we ended up with. And as such, after the clip hit the internet yesterday, throngs of fans seemed to come to the same conclusion about Mario bearing more than a slight resemblance to our musical-loving, red wine-slugging domestic goddess.
“Someone said this sounds like Linda Belcher and now I can’t unheard it,” tweeted one perplexed fan, echoing countless others.
Others, on the other hand, very understandably feel as though it’s a sacrilege to compare Linda Belcher to Chris Pratt’s Mario:
Unfortunately, barring any kind of “Ugly Sonic” retooling of the movie, which seems highly unlikely given Pratt’s star power, the harsh reality is that we’ll have to come to terms with the fact that Mario’s voice will not be replaced with an actor more competent for the role. Oh well. At least we’ll always have Jack Black as Bowser and an otherwise well-rounded cast of outstanding voice talent. Oh, to think what could have been, though — and we’d still take Roberts over Pratt any day.