peach – JenEric Designs

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – JenEric Movie Review

May 13, 2026 by Éric Desmarais

Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2026 film The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Story

The story was about the same level as the Super Mario Bros. video game and had significantly more plot threads that were not resolved.

Score: 0

Characters

The movie doesn’t slow down between set pieces and nostalgia to give anyone much development except Bowser, who then goes back to being a jerk. It would have been nice to have some sort of character bonding other than the one scene of Peach and Mario “not being angry”.

Both Peach and Rosalina suffer from the “Strong Female Character” syndrome where they are unbeatable unless the plot dictates they get captured.

Score: 0

Dialogue

There were some clever pieces of dialogue, a lot of call backs to the games, and some fun silliness.

Score: 1

Visuals and Music

The animation and easter eggs were wonderful. The space scenes were pretty and the character design was great.

The music was lovely and used lots of themes and sections from the games.

Score: 1

Fun

The kids loved it although even they had questions afterward about some plot points. The adults were less impressed but didn’t hate it.

I loved the nostalgia factor and I should be the prime audience for this, but it mostly left me meh. It wasn’t a good story and the characters were 8-bit.

Score: 0.5

Overall

A pretty animated film with enough nostalgia to keep you interested and some amazing music. Unfortunately, the story isn’t interesting and the characters are flat.

Final Score: 2.5 Stars out of 5

Canning

August 10, 2020 by Éric Desmarais

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

When my Mom decided to do something, she threw herself into it with recklessness and hyper-fixation. She never neglected what she had to do, but everything else went away for a little while.

This meant giant cleaning sprees, massive meals, epic videogame marathons, and obscene amounts of canning. Every couple of years, she’d go into full canning mode and make jams, fruit butters, pickles, and picked beets. One year, she made a crab-apple and rose-hip butter that was one step away from the consistency and sweetness of solid honey. She and I have never been able to recreate whatever accident caused the deliciousness.

The smells were fantastic, the tastes were usually good, and the frantic energy was exhilarating. I threw out the last can of pickled beets last year after it had been in one cupboard or another for nearly twenty years.

I have a wonderful memory of peeling beets in the sink of my childhood home. ABBA was playing loudly on her old boombox, the smell of vinegar and pickling spices filled the air, and my hands were purple/red from the beets. One little squeeze and the beet would whoosh out into the sink; a satisfying and squishy sensation.

At some point last year, we were gifted or bought a jar of peach jam. I started making home made rolls for snacks instead of English muffins and we started devouring the jam. When we finished it, we had no farmers markets, church bazaars, or friends gifting jam; so I decided to give in and make some.

I bought all the supplies and decided I’d do just the jam. Then I thought of making salsa. So I made peach jam (which is delicious) and peach salsa (also delicious). It was a frantic 4 hours of trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. The peaches froze in our fridge so blanching caused some swearing, but overall it went well.

A lot of my Mom is in me. I feel the same hyper-fixation with many things. I try to use it when it’s helpful and tame it when it’s not, but it’s always a struggle. Probably why I hadn’t started canning until now. I’ve already thought of a dozen recipes I can make and I’m going to try and limit myself to one per week maximum.

Canning was fun, but made me sad. I wish my Mom was here to sit on a chair in the kitchen and order me around. Maybe that’s the real reason I waited so long; it didn’t feel right to do it without her.

Be kind and be safe,

Éric