When it was announced that a film about Nintendo’s mascot was in production, it was met with widespread scepticism. This is no surprise when you consider that the majority of game to film features have been more than a little disappointing, to say the least.

And although 1993’s live action Super Mario Bros. effort, starring Bob Hoskins as the world’s favourite plumber, may well attract a certain cult status these days, it was, and still remains to many, an abomination of the franchise.

The things is though, you just can’t a keep a good mascot down, as this latest animated film proves.

Just starting their own plumbing business in New York’s Brooklyn are Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day). The phone isn’t exactly ringing off the hook as yet, but it’s early days.

Mario sees an opportunity however, when a part of Brooklyn springs a severe leak, and decides to go to the rescue. Their investigations lead them to a mystery area below the streets, where Luigi pokes his nose into a curious pipe – and is then suddenly gone.

Seeing his brother disappear, Mario isn’t hesitant about following and quick follows down the same pipe. Unfortunately for him, it’s an extensive pipe system, that finds him go one way, and Luigi another.

As soon as he lands, Mario realises he’s not in Brooklyn anymore, but has no idea where he is, in a land covered with mushrooms. He’s soon approached by Toad (Keegan-Michael Key), who informs him he’s in the Mushroom Kingdom, which kinda makes sense.

Mario tells him he’s lost his brother, so Toad suggests the best thing to do is to follow him to the castle and meet Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is bound to help him out.

But after the pair do meet, it transpires that Peach, and the rest of the kingdom, have a bigger problem all of their own, with a tyrant by the name of Bowser (Jack Black), keen on causing havoc throughout the land. She could really do with some help, but is Mario up to the challenge?

Animation is a costly business, and with Nintendo themselves heavily involved with this project, it was never going to be done on the cheap. So it’s no surprise that the final budget for this film came in at a $100 million. But as the saying goes, if you want quality, you have to pay for it, and thankfully, that’s what we have here, pure quality animation.

It looks stunning. It’s vibrant colours are like what we can only imagine a sugar rush is to someone with diabetes.

Illumination know their stuff, having produced five very successful films in the Despicable Me franchise, helping to make Minions a household name. So gaming fans needn’t have worried, as the team have put an incredible amount of Ninty love into this film. So much so that’s it’s difficult not to watch without a permanent grin on your face.

And as you would expect, it’s like a chocolatier’s establishment in March – wall to wall with Easter eggs, with the film littered with visual and audio treats from Mario’s world.

There were some murmurings surrounding the voice casting of the film, specifically Chris Pratt as Mario, but as it turns out, they weren’t necessary as he does a fine job as our favourite plumber. The film even leans into these concerns really well early on, offering a special cameo to just underline it.

So even though it cost a small fortune to make, it turns out it was worth the risk, as fans turned out in their droves, so much so that the film broke the elusive billion mark at the box office surpassing Frozen II as the biggest animated opener of all time.

This will no doubt open up the floodgates to other Nintendo franchises getting the screen treatment, be it animation, live action or and TV shows, so we should be prepared for that.

With the games industry making more money than film, it shouldn’t be a surprise that gamers have gone out en masse to catch one of the most popular video game characters of all time. And luckily they’ve been rewarded – as have the studio, clearly – with what is an open love letter to fans of both gaming and animation, that can be best described in one familiar word – woohoo.