The AP Inspires Memes After Posting Poetic Snippet From Their 'Mario Movie' Review

We get it: As a journalist, when tasked with covering something that doesn't exactly excite you, it's easy to use the opportunity to let your creative mind wander.

That seems to have been the case for Associated Press film critic Jake Coyle as he sat down to review The Super Mario Bros. Movie, released yesterday in theaters. Rather than lead with a relevant zinger to the Super Mario franchise, Coyle instead dug into the annals of poetry, quoting T.S. Eliot ahead of his take on the new film.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. But it is also, if I check the clock, Mario Time," Coyle wrote, quoting T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

While amusing, this wouldn't have been all that notable if not for the fact that the AP only tweeted the T.S. Eliot quote with a picture of Illumination's Mario brothers, leading to an extremely surreal tweet.

AP later blamed the tweet on a technical glitch but elected to keep it up, possibly because the tweet is Ed Balls-level bizarre, and by the time AP apparently noticed the error, Twitter was already having a field day with memes.

While not everyone caught the Eliot reference, many ran with the idea of pairing the Mario movie with poetic, downbeat quotes and lyrics in the AP style.

Coyle's review includes several very funny one-liners, such as "The Super Mario Bros. Movie begins much like Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing: in a Brooklyn pizza parlor," and, "An invincibility star is the most sought-after item in this adventure, greatly exaggerating its typical usefulness. Those things last for like 10 seconds."

However, Coyle ended up lukewarm on the film, writing, "That’s because as nice as it is to look at The Super Mario Bros. Movie, it’s not anywhere near as fun as it would be to play it. It’s a-him, Mario, but it’s no a-masterpiece."