Directed By Jared Hess

Starring – Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Jack Black

The Plot – Four misfits (Momoa, Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen) find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld, a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they’ll have to master this world while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative-the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world.

Rated PG for violence/action, adult language, suggestive/rude humor and some scary images.

A Minecraft Movie | Official Trailer

POSITIVES

Adapting what is arguably the most popular gaming franchise currently going comes with great challenge and responsibility, especially considering the original first few games didn’t even have a plot, and while “A Minecraft Movie” is conflicted with its lifelessly dull and uninspired exploration, it at least does a few things right in order to properly conjure an authentic experience for its legion of hardcore gamers. The first is definitely attaching Hess to steer the ship, as his unflinching ridiculousness in films like “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” definitely does a more than serviceable job towards articulating the rampant danger and bizarreness of this fantastical world so far removed from reality, helping to supplant the idea that anything that can happen in this world of imagination. Hess’ affinity for the strangely surreal definitely does wonders to energize the infectiousness of this setting, but it would be all for nothing without the constant fan service of colorful characters and memorable quotes from the games, which saw my auditorium continuously clapping at the remember berries that this film had no reservations towards sprouting. While I myself am not a fan of the games, I know enough about them to know when these integral aspects emphatically elicit themselves in the depths of some climactic action set pieces, proving ample time and opportunity were given to share such a faithfully persistent link to the fans who will undoubtedly drive in droves to see it, all the while helping to appraise such an irreplaceable value to Jason Momoa and Jack Black, who are undoubtedly the two best things about this movie. Momoa is the primary show-stealer here, with his unblemished commitment to craft that sees him continuously unloading these bone dry deliveries too silly to be taken seriously, yet too awkward to just write off all together, and though the comedic material that he is enacting does nothing to honor said commitment, it’s clear that Momoa is doing everything that he can to make his Garbage Man character feel larger than life, with exceptional comedic timing that hints at a promising future for the actor who has done mostly action movies to this point. The same can certainly be said for Black, who with expected melodies and manically supercharged deliveries that are always elevated to eleven, is undeniably having the time of his life acting opposite of this innovative world, and when sharing the screen and scene alongside Momoa, counterbalances a charismatically charming one-two punch that not only showcased an impeccable chemistry between them, but also glaring emphasis towards the blandness of the scenes that don’t include them, serving as the pulse and presence of a movie that both of them are too good to be a part of.

NEGATIVES

If “A Minecraft Movie” serves as the opportunity for making me fall head over heels in love with this world and surrounding characters, then it fails miserably, as I found this one of the most boring and even annoying films that I have experienced this year, beginning directly with the air of the material, which fails on nearly every measurable aspect. For a franchise born and thrived upon creativity and originality, there’s so little of it in the screenplay, which not only stitches together as many tropes from other escapist group comedies like “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”, “Uncharted” or “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, but also feels like it directly rips off “The Wizard of Oz” in the summarized outline of its plot, where characters conflicted in their real lives venture out to a fantastical world of imaginative possibilities, only to come into conflict with a cruel and condemning leader. If that sounds familiar, it’s because so little effort went into expanding upon the lore and world-building of its gaming origins, and while this leads to a continuously familiar and predictable outline in the direction of its journey, it does even worse to the complete lack of versatility within the tone, with its one-note dedication towards childishly stupid comedy that it almost entirely refuses to deviate away from. I use the word “Almost” because when the film does attempt some underlining emotionality to certain characters, it arrives and leaves almost simultaneously, perhaps as a result of tasting how underdeveloped these characters truly are along the way, and with no time to commit to these cause or flesh out humanity in ways that feel relatable towards the audience, it offers a vapidness among the character investment that didn’t grant me even a semblance of care or concern towards their periodic conflicts, which makes the aforementioned attempt into hearty territory feel every bit hilarious as it does mistimed. This serves as the only hilariousness that I got throughout the engagement, as the humor is so painfully unfunny and uncreative that it often settles for the lowest hanging branch of juvenile sentiments, without anything that even slightly resembles rhythm or confidence in the deliveries of the talented ensemble who unload them. It’s the worst kind of noise-making or illogical kind of G-rated childish humor that feels embarrassing to hear out right in an overwhelmingly quiet auditorium, where even the hardcore Minecraft fanatics aren’t indulging in it, and while I did laugh once in the movie, it’s nothing to credit the creativity of the material, but rather Momoa’s expressive grandeur to oversell something with very little potential, and the worst kind of comedy makes even a 96-minute movie prolonged with painful suffering, especially when those outside of Momoa or Black execute comedic matters that they have no business attempting. On the subject of those surrounding castmates, you could’ve omitted them from the film completely by its halfway mark, and I probably wouldn’t of noticed, but the idea of too many characters and not enough material continuously comes through in the deviation between worlds, with another insufferable turn from Jennifer Coolidge holding up the real world with a subplot that quite literally goes nowhere. It’s easy enough to state that you could lose this entire arc and the movie would actually be paced a lot better, but it’s strange when you consider how one-note her character is, so essentially the cuts back to her just hammer home what we already know, in that she’s horny and will satisfy this urge with even a character not from this world. Because kids, right? Coolidge is bad, but Danielle Brooks is a misused toy that the film continuously throws away, and between her simply being used as a reactionary tool for Momoa’s madness, or receiving absolutely no exposition or backstory, she might as well be a nameless, faceless mannequin in the crowd of underdeveloped or uninteresting characters, which is even more troubling when you consider the revolutionary force that she was in 2022’s “The Color Purple”. Finally, I would be doing a huge disservice if I didn’t talk about the special effects and greenscreen work for the film, which completely lack any kind of tangibility to the characters towards feeling even temporarily believable. Part of its uncanny consistency can be argued to be intentional, as this is ideally a world made up of building blocks, however my problem pertains more to the execution of action sequences, where a character flying or a physical confrontation will feel like it was developed in a studio thriving on Microsoft Paint, and while it does a good job of replicating the world from the games, the decision to utilize artificiality over set decoration makes this feel like more of an animated movie than a live-action adaptation, with flimsy direction from Hess to his ensemble that should see them expressing danger or fear in their bodily motions during intense sequences, but instead feel as casually calm as someone utilizing the filters in their Snapchat, which play particularly awkward and unsettling on the biggest screen imaginable.

OVERALL
“A Minecraft Movie” is another uninspiring and unimpressive brick in the wall to gaming adaptations that proves it’s difficult to lose yourself to otherworldly escapism when you’re subjected to flat comedy and conventional storytelling of the most reheated variety. While temporary charms are elicited from the back-breaking work of Jason Momoa and Jack Black continuously losing themselves in the occasion, as well as comfort food in fan service aplenty, the film never builds on a promising foundation in which the sky is the limit, instead opting for garish visuals and motional storytelling that might be enough for fanatics, but won’t do anything to endear itself to outsiders.

My Grade: 3.9 or F+