THE STORY – A mysterious portal pulls four misfits into the Overworld, a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master the terrain while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected crafter named Steve.
THE CAST – Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers, Jennifer Coolidge, Rachel House, Matt Berry & Jermaine Clement
THE TEAM – Jared Hess (Director), Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, Chris Galletta & Allison Schroeder (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 101 Minutes
Once properties like “The Last of Us” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” succeeded as adaptations for the small or big screen in such a dominant manner, it was clear the era of the superhero film was crumbling, and the era of video game adaptations was rising from those ashes. Now, studios are scavenging libraries of gaming developers, hoping to bank on beloved IP for easy box office hits. So it was only a matter of time before “Minecraft” would get a chance to leave the consoles of gamers worldwide and land on the big screen. “Minecraft,” a low-fi creation that became a part of gamers’ lives in 2009, has cemented itself as a gaming staple even for today’s generation of video game enthusiasts. So it’s funny that a game that boasts creativity as its strongest attribute is given an unimaginative live-action adaptation that also feels like an amalgamation of TikTok-level brain rot but “Minecraft” themed.
Those painfully unaware of the world of “Minecraft” and the mechanics of how the game operates are quickly informed through Jack Black’s lengthy (and occasionally hilarious) opening narration. Black’s turquoise-shirt-wearing miner Steve was always desperate to avoid the real world’s mundanities in fueling his creativity, which he wished to explore. After discovering a portal into a new realm, one where whatever he wanted to create was only as possible as his imagination could take him, Steve soon ropes in four strangers and audiences on a by-the-numbers McGuffin fetch quest of a story that only loses steam the longer it goes on.
“A Minecraft Movie” at least starts on the right foot tonally, leaning towards a far more absurd register, which makes sense considering director Jared Hess’s oddball sensibilities, found in his previous work such as “Napoleon Dynamite.” There’s a feeling that “A Minecraft Movie” is desperately trying to generate something in the vein of films like “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” or even “The Cat in the Hat,” yet nothing that transpires in the film feels as inventive or downright amusing.
Black and Hess, who are reuniting for the first time in almost twenty years since their last film, “Nacho Libre,” sadly struggle to recapture any of the magic that was once there. While there are far more cleverly written gags than one would expect for “A Minecraft Movie,” a large amount of the humor is derived from Blacks’ exaggerated enunciations of Minecraft terminology which mostly land through the sheer memorability of it all. The secret weapon of “A Minecraft Movie” is actually Jason Momoa, whose Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison is an assortment of laugh-inducing riches. A washed-up gaming legend whose financial ruin has led him to inadvertently become a “mentor” to a young, misguided genius named Henry (played by Sebastian Hansen). Whenever Black and Momoa are absent in some capacity in “A Minecraft Movie” in exchange for Hansen’s storyline involving a misfit who just moved to town with his legal guardian and sister Natalie (played by Emma Myers), the film becomes lifeless. The screenplay is a jumbled mess of clichéd storylines presented in a multitude of family films that have come before it. It only makes bits like Jennifer Coolidge’s recently divorced and overtly horny school principal Marlene who dates a village person jarringly, stand out in a far more aggressive manner.
Hess was also always going to fight an uphill battle in terms of making a film about “Minecraft” look good, but even what’s on display is tough to swallow. Green screen, at times in the “Minecraft” universe, plays to some of the film’s more slapstick comedic moments of characters running in place for long durations. This gag, like most in “A Minecraft Movie,” quickly becomes old and gives the film’s look a cheapness that cannot be overcome. Even creatures in this universe, such as zombies, creepers, etc, all possess this weirdly hyper-realistic way of movement, unlike the game, yet it’s so clearly CGI. It feels like a missed opportunity not to play into the stiffness of these creatures’ in-game movements, and be captured in a “Hundreds of Beavers“-esque style of costumed hijinks. It seems Hess ultimately couldn’t pinpoint a specific vision for this film as it’s obviously a video game adaptation made for the sole purpose of making an easy payday for a studio.
There’s a world where “A Minecraft Movie” actually backs the idealism of creativity, which it so proudly boasts in its barebones story. Maybe if the film were animated, it could’ve played far better to the concept of endless possibilities and allowed for a far more visually dazzling spectacle. Inherently, maybe it would never even be possible, as the idea of creativity can only be celebrated as little as possible when it’s given the parameters of being in such a lazy ip scrape of the barrel as this. There used to be a time when a majority of children’s films were made with such care and intention. Now it seems all you need is buzzwords, celebrities, and “Avengers: Endgame” clap-inducing moments, all of which “A Minecraft Movie” has, unlike a soul, which at least the game feels like it possesses.
