‘A Minecraft Movie’ builds a corny family adventure

At forty years old I’ve made peace
with the fact that I’ll never be the youngest guy in a given room and I’ve
(mostly) accepted that an increasing amount of youth-oriented pop culture,
slang etc. is going to go over my head. Besides outing myself as an old fogey
who has to ask for recommendations before buying my young relatives Christmas
presents, this is my long-winded way of saying that films aimed at younger
audiences aren’t pitched at my particular demographic. That might be worth
keeping in mind as you read the following review of A Minecraft Movie, a
family adventure based on the phenomenally popular video game. While I can’t
speak to how the game’s fans will receive this film, it mostly left me
bewildered.

A Minecraft Movie follows
Steve (Jack Black) a would-be miner who discovers a magical relic that opens a
portal to The Overworld, a strange cube-like realm where he can create anything
he can imagine. Steve falls in love with his new home and stays for years but
when the evil sorceress Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House) seeks the relic as a
means of conquering The Overworld Steve sends it back to his home on Earth for
safekeeping. There it’s eventually discovered by down and out former videogame
champion Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa) , a pair of
young orphans (Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen), and a realtor/petting zoo
operator (Danielle Brooks) who soon go through the portal themselves. Now this
motley gang of lovable losers must team up with Steve to protect the relic and
find their way home. On the one hand you have to admire the way the filmmakers
took an open-world sandbox game with essentially no story and found enough
material to power a feature length plot but it’s also pretty obvious that this
film probably would have been better off if the source material had just a
little bit more story upon which to anchor things.

A Minecraft Movie is the
latest effort from cult favorite director Jared Hess and although he lacks a
writing credit here, this is clearly his film through and through. Hess has
spent over twenty years on offbeat small-town weirdos and he applies that same
signature formula to a bigger budget stage with this project. As I said about
Jason Statham last week, you know exactly what you’re going to get and with
Hess you know you’re going to get a blend of the odd and the corny. This
corniness is the predominant impression I imagine most viewers are going to
take away after viewing this film. The final verdict on whether you think this
is a good film or a bad one is likely going to be based on how well you can
stomach (or perhaps even like) this corniness. 

I mostly come down on the side of
“nay” when it comes to this style of humor, but even I have to admit that there
are moments when it works here. Black is his usual high-energy self and even
gets to indulge in his classic rock-inspired singing ability in a few scenes.
That said, it’s Momoa who makes the biggest impression here and depending on
your point of view he’s either the MVP or the film’s biggest liability (or
possibly both at various points). With his 80s-inspired “cool guy” persona,
fringed pink leather jacket and a command of Spanish that makes Peggy Hill seem
fluent, Momoa swaggers through the film like a magnificent goof and while not
all the humor lands, I think you’ll be laughing at least once or twice. I
honestly can’t recall a time when a major star was this willing to look so
ridiculous and if nothing else, he deserves points for sheer audacity.

While it’s primarily aiming for
comedy, A Minecraft Movie does make a fair attempt to lean into the
family adventure side of things too. The quest might feel generic but it does a
reasonable job of incorporating elements and ideas from the game and I’m sure
younger viewers will have some fun watching the good guys swashbuckle their
ways through a horde of cubic monsters.

In the end though, A Minecraft
Movie just collapses under the accumulated weight of sheer goofiness. It
feels like the studio’s instructions were to take something that could have
been an obvious IP cash-in and give it some actual artistic direction but this
lacks the strong sense of creative vision that made similar projects (think Barbieor the The Super Mario Bros. Movie) work. Then again, maybe I’m just
getting too old for this kind of thing.

 A Minecraft Movie is
rated PG for action violence and thematic content and is now playing at AMC
Showplace Springfield 8 and AMC Classic Springfield 12.

Rated 2 stars out of a possible 4.