Moviewatchin' Psychopath!

A MINECRAFT MOVIE:

JACK BLACK AND JASON MOMOA MAKE AWKWARD VIDEO GAME FILM ADAPTATION WATCHABLE!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Danielle Brooks, Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Sebastian Hansen, and Emma Myers in A Minecraft Movie

Jack Black (Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Tropic Thunder, Jumanji 2 and 3) continues his video game movie world tour after 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie and last year’s Borderlands with A Minecraft Movie, based on the enormously popular video game of the same name by Mojang Studios. The film is directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre, Gentlemen Broncos) who had previously directed Black in the 2006 film, Nacho Libre and brought one of the most beloved comedies of the 2000s to the screen over 20 years ago with Napoleon Dynamite.

I should make this clear before I get started, I have never played the Minecraft game before, but I know a fair amount about it like that it’s a sandbox game that’s fueled on the player’s imagination and revolves around creating things out of blocks, I recognize some of the character designs and objects from the game, and that the kids in South Park used Minecraft to block investigative murder porn from their parents in an episode. Aside from those and seeing cosplays at conventions, I know practically nothing about the game itself, but I certainly see the appeal of it especially among kids and those with a creative mind.

Because of my lack of experience with Minecraft, I will be judging this film on its own merits and boy, did this movie explode when the trailers came out? When the film was first announced, I and probably a lot of other people assumed it would have been a fully animated movie given the retro, pixelated look of the game, that was not what we were getting it turned out.

The trailer featured live-action actors with a bunch of green screen environments and CGI creatures on par with Spy Kids 3D: Game Over that didn’t even look like a real movie. It looked like a Tropic Thunder-style fake trailer which is ironic given Jack Black is in both so, a lot of people scoffed at the film and its bad marketing, I can sort of understand live-action/animation with Sonic the Hedgehog, but with Minecraft? I don’t think so!

Well, the good news is this movie isn’t the dumpster fire everyone was probably expecting and the actors are clearly giving their all. However, I wouldn’t say it’s a very good film either.

The film follows Steve (Black) who had been yearning for the mines ever since he was a child and one day started digging into the mines until he found something extraordinary. That being, a magical fantasy world known as the Overworld where anything you imagine can be created out of blocks.

However, when a young boy named Henry (Played by newcomer Sebastian Hansen), his older sister, Natalie (Emma Myers-Wednesday, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder), an 80s video game champion known as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa-Game of Thrones, DC Extended Universe, Fast X), and real estate agent, Dawn (Danielle Brooks-Orange Is the New Black, The Color Purple (2023), The Bad Guys 2) stumble into the Overworld, they must team up with Steve in order to save this imaginative realm from the dark forces of Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House-Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Moana 1 and 2, Thor: Ragnarok) and her army of piglins from the Nether and find their way back home.

The film also stars Jennifer Coolidge (American Pie franchise, Promising Young Woman, The White Lotus) as Vice Principal Marlene.

Overall, A Minecraft Movie probably should have been dead on arrival after its dreaded marketed campaign, but Jack Black and Jason Momoa’s involvement and the film’s attempts at capturing the spirit of the source material make it an entertainingly misguided video game movie adaptation. The movie is not especially written that well or funny and relies on a lot of catchphrases and actors doing silly things, but occasionally there is a funny line or reaction that the actors pull off okay.

With the exception of the voice of Claptrap in the Borderlands movie, Jack Black makes even his worst movies a better experience just by his presence and to his credit, he isn’t half-assing his performance and effectively puts his signature energy and goofiness into the role of Steve. Sure, he’s just doing his usual Jack Black thing and is probably the last actor you’d expect to play Steve from Minecraft, but his style of humor and comedic timing does fit the tone of the movie quite well even if most of his performance consists of him naming Minecraft things in his signature “Jables” voice.

Jason Momoa is a standout as The Garbage Man, a former gaming champion who’s all brawn with little brain and tries to be in charge but ends up doing dumb things throughout the film. He genuinely delivers some good laughs in the movie and his performance here as well as his outrageously hammy villain role in Fast X really highlight Momoa’s comedic talents.

Everyone else ranges from fine to…just there, I’ll just leave it at that.

The CG animation and green screens I initially criticized in the trailers because it never looked like the real actors and digital environments, creatures, and objects occupied the same space. To an extent, I still feel that way with the actual movie, but it actually does capture the look and feel of a Minecraft world and you can definitely see the love and attention to detail the animators and visual designers put into it.

The film’s plot is very scatterbrained and unfocused and often feels like a bunch of random ideas for aMinecraft movie thrown together in a blender with no real flow to anything. There’s a bizarre subplot involving one of the Minecraft villagers escaping into the real world and develops a romance with Jennifer Coolidge as the Vice Principal and the film constantly cuts back to it because clever? Even the eventual punchline I found very strange rather than funny.

A Minecraft Movie is sure to appeal to kids and fans of the game in the same way the original Pokémon movies or the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie did for kids of those eras. There are moments of inspiration and humor thanks to Black and Momoa, but it’s a movie that’s clearly made for its target audience and doesn’t have much for anyone outside of that demographic…though it could make for an entertaining bad movie night with drinks in your system.