I'm going off my brother who is almost worryingly obsessed with bears. Apparently ursa and other bear words all came from proto Indo European and all are not the original word for bear, which is lost, because of the fear. He could definitely be wrong but that's how he tells it

Fun fact, the original word for bear is lost because people were so afraid that if you said it a bear would show up and eat you, so they used the word that eventually morphed into bear as a euphemism

I tricked my niece and nephew into watching it, at first they were horrified that it wasn't like the trailer for the new one but when I asked at the end they said they loved it. Watched it a few more times before they went home.

My point is I don't agree that it failed, I think it hit the right amount of cheesy 90s ridiculousness and reimagination of what Mario was available at the time.

It's a movie you laugh at, not with, and I don't think those are appreciated as much as they should be