AP – The latest IP to be mined into a Hollywood blockbuster is appropriately a video game that celebrates digging: A Minecraft Movie.
Like The Super Mario Bros Movie and Jumanji before it, A Minecraft Movie centres on four misfits who enter a mysterious portal that pulls them into a strange land, this time cubic, like Lego only enhanced.
The Jared Hess-directed action-adventure artfully straddles the line between delighting preteen gamers and keeping their parents awake. It’s an often-bananas adaptation, with bizarre digressions into turquoise blouses and tater tot pizzas. It has Jennifer Coolidge being very Jennifer Coolidge. Need we say more?
If you’ve never heard of – or its denizens like Creepers, Piglins, Villagers and Endermen – you are in big trouble. Consult with the closest 10-year-old immediately (I have one and he noticed a sweet nod to the late YouTuber Technoblade, an Easter egg of sorts).
The movie is faithful to the world of the game, while adding some things – orbs and crystals – to aid the plot. But if you come in cold and spot pandas and folks punching through earth, you’ll likely side with one human character who said, “This place makes no sense.”
Our travellers – a sweet brother and sister (Emma Myers and Sebastian Eugene Hansen), their nutty real estate agent (Danielle Brooks) and a deeply dumb, washed-up pro video game player (Jason Momoa) – are guided by Jack Black, playing an expert crafter named Steve stranded in the world.
If it does anything, A Minecraft Movie marks the comedic coming of age of Momoa, who has shown glimpses of his chops in the Aquaman and Fast X movies. But when he’s not on screen in this one, it leaves the movie slack, which is saying a lot when you have Black being his full-force, over-the-top Black.
“There’s no ‘i’ in ‘team’ but there are two ‘i’s in ‘winning,'” Momoa said as Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison, who is fond of fingerless gloves and a Barbie-pink leather jacket with a fringe. In another scene, he noted, “Paper doesn’t grow on trees.”
The screenplay written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta is as loosey-goosey as you’d expect from five different voices, with a traditional Marvel-style battle at the end fuelled by plenty of “Let’s do this!” declarations but with a surprisingly goofball first half.
Like countless films before it, A Minecraft Movie is all about the quest to go home, which in this case means navigating zombies, skeletons shooting fire-tipped arrows and a place called The Nether, a perpetually dark hell where horrible creatures mine for gold. For some reason, the ruler there, a witch, has glowing eyes and a British accent.
The writers make some America’s Got Talent jokes, Black has a few songs – including a bizarre Steve’s Lava Chicken – and we spend an inordinate of time focused on Momoa’s body, but it all ends in a dance party.
The movie has a Dark Crystal-meets-Transformers vibe, a too-subtle message about financial failure and something about friendship. – Mark Kennedy
