GameSpot gave Mario an 8. Its critical checklist included a missing Yoshi.

First of all, Phil Owen puts a missing dinosaur in the negative column of a professional film review. GameSpot has issued an 8/10, and part of the supporting paperwork is apparently a failed attendance register. What should a reader do with this information? Deduct another point if nobody brings Wario to the parent-teacher conference? A character's absence needs an argument about what the film loses. Otherwise you're checking a Happy Meal for the wrong toy.

Then there's the voice acting assessment, which repeatedly settles for basic competence before celebrating the overall package. First of all, getting through the performance without causing an incident is a qualification for operating a supermarket checkout, not a particularly useful critical standard. Owen spends time reassuring readers about casting anxiety, but reassurance isn't analysis. Tell us how a delivery shapes a scene. This reads like a restaurant inspector announcing that the chef successfully wore trousers.

To be fair, Owen does offer a concrete visual example: a nighttime conversation framed by glowing flowers. That's useful criticism, and more of it would help. Instead, the review makes a large comparison with Spider-Verse while giving relatively little explanation of movement, editing, or visual storytelling. First of all, if you're going to bring out the ceremonial measuring stick, show us the measurements. You can't just wave a baguette over two buildings and declare comparable architecture.

My score for this review is 3/10. The problem isn't that Owen enjoyed himself; enjoyment requires no customer-service appeal. It's that the article spends so much effort settling casting nerves and touring the premise that its strongest judgments arrive with surprisingly thin receipts. By the closing recommendation, the critical register is printing on a single strand of spaghetti. But does it actually WORK? As buying advice for readers who want to understand the reviewer's standards, only if their main concern was dinosaur inventory.