‘A Minecraft Movie’ offers up plenty of fun whether you’ve played the game or not

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — We built this city!

Synopsis

In A Minecraft Movie, Steve (Jack Black) is sick of his doldrum office life, yearning to work in the mines that enamored him as a child. When Steve gets a job as a miner, he discovers two artifacts, which, when combined, transport him to a cubic world where the world is at his fingertips: literally. In this world, if you can think it, you can craft it, all with the power of your mind and hands.

Years later, 80’s video game champ Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa) is financially destitute and comes into possession of Steve’s artifacts. After he meets a new kid in town, Henry (Sebastian Hansen), his older sister Natalie (Emma Myers), and their realtor Dawn (Danielle Brooks), the artifact is combined, transporting them all into the world of Minecraft. There, they meet Steve, who teaches them how to thrive and survive this limitless world so they can hopefully find a way back home.

My thoughts

From the little I know about Minecraft, it’s not something that really lends itself to a narrative format. There are, for sure, characters and lore that have developed over time, but the whole point of the game is to do whatever you want, with no real goals beyond what the players set for themselves. You’re just supposed to craft buildings, survive zombie attacks every night, build more stuff the next day, rinse and repeat. I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s the basic gist.

That goes for many video games, though. There are plenty of games that tell a story you could easily adapt into a movie or TV show, but there are just as many out there where there’s barely a story or no story at all. You simply play the game and have fun, so when filmmakers are tasked with adapting something with no real narrative depth to it, they really have their work cut out for them when it comes to writing a screenplay.

Building blocks

Minecraft is all about being the most creative person you can be, so it’s funny that the filmmakers took possibly the laziest route possible when it came to adapting the virtual world to the big screen. You’ve seen it before in movies like Tron or the new Jumanji’s where the real-world characters get sucked into the video game world. From a studio executive’s perspective, having human characters is more “relatable” and also allows for many fun fish-out-of-water moments.

So, I’m not really surprised the people involved with A Minecraft Movie decided to go in the most obvious and accessible direction instead of getting more inventive like The LEGO Movie. There are various forms of exposition from Steve to explain the world of Minecraft, and how it works, and even after all that, it’s still kind of vague to me. I guess that’s emblematic of the game’s sandbox nature, where you can do literally whatever you put your mind to, so it’s best to just go with it.

Even if I don’t really know anything about it, the Minecraft world itself was pretty neat and fun to look at, even if the script was making my eyes glaze over. The production design rides this fine line of being the blocky, cubic world Minecraft is, but without the pixelated aesthetic and with far more detail. The green screen effects of the cast walking around the virtual world ranged from fine to downright poor, looking like an SNL sketch at times, but for the most part, the cinematic Minecraft world was pretty cool.

There were a total of six credited writers who worked on this, and with so many cooks in the kitchen, it definitely makes the story pretty scattershot with a whole lot of jumping around that never really allows the character relationships to build up and pay off. There’s not really a central protagonist, either. It starts off as Steve’s movie, then becomes Garrett’s movie, then Henry’s movie. They all oddly feel like main characters and side characters at the same time.

That’s what happens when you have too many characters to focus on, as they and the actors performing them end up getting lost in the shuffle. Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Hansen all fall victim to this, where they really only complicate the narrative. If the format of the movie was just a buddy comedy between Jason Momoa and Jack Black, the script could have been tightened up with more purpose, but you have to check those boxes to appeal to the kids, I guess.

Cast and comedy to the rescue

Yet, despite all these issues, I give A Minecraft Movie a mild pass simply because it’s surprisingly funny to a ridiculous degree. I expected some gags here and there but literally having me in tears from the dialogue is a whole different level entirely. This is directed by Jared Hess, of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre fame, and it’s definitely at its best when it’s playing to his oddball, deadpan strengths. His command of dry, surreal absurdity is brilliant, with the movie really shining when he gets to directorially let loose.

The prime example of A Minecraft Movie actually working despite itself is the subplot revolving around Jennifer Coolidge’s vice principal character. A villager from the Minecraft world wanders into the real world, where he encounters Jennifer Coolidge after she hits him with her car, so it looks like pieces are being put into place to make the worlds collide at the end of the movie, or something to that effect.

But nope. She just takes him out on a date, and they fall in love. None of this factored into the rest of the movie at all. Her scenes are part of one of the most superfluous and pointless subplots I’ve ever seen in a movie where you could cut her scenes out entirely, and absolutely nothing would change. Hess and the screenwriters don’t let a good comedic opportunity go to waste, though, so they just let Jennifer Coolidge do her thing, which delivers hysterical results.

Her scenes add nothing to the story, but they do add plenty of extra comedy to it, and the movie is all that much better for it. I would love to see a detailed behind-the-scenes process on this production because it really feels like Hess (and possibly his wife and co-writing partner Jerusha) did a detailed final pass over this script to ensure it was as consistently funny as possible. If anything here was going to work for the adults, it was the comedy, which was so finely tuned to my humor wavelength that I couldn’t help but constantly smile and crack up.

Jack Black may be portraying Steve, the protagonist of Minecraft, but Jason Momoa totally stole the show. This role as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison actually gave me a lot of respect for him, as Garrett is a total dummy and a loser, with Momoa completely leaning into that. He recognizes the character he’s playing is a pathetic manchild and has no problem making himself look like a fool onscreen. Like John Cena, he’s aware that looking goofy from time to time doesn’t take away the fact that he’s a huge, imposing, musclebound man.

The other cast members are solid, but they don’t get as much fun and silly stuff to do like Momoa. Jack Black is Jack Black, so if you already don’t like him, he’s not going to change any minds here. I like him, though, and he provided his distinct brand of zaniness only he possesses. Danielle Brooks and young actors Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen do fine with the material they’re given, too, but again, Momoa gets all the best lines and bits.

Final verdict

For any Minecraft playing kids out there (which seems to be all of them), there’s going to be plenty to enjoy about A Minecraft Movie. The kids in my screening were constantly laughing, gasping, and whispering to each other when certain references, characters, or gameplay elements would pop up. They’re certainly not going to care about sloppy plotting when they’re there to see one of their favorite video game worlds accurately and respectfully represented.

The most shocking thing of all about A Minecraft Movie is that adults have decent odds of enjoying it just as much as their children, just for different reasons. When it’s a Jared Hess movie that relies on a talented cast and silly, yet sharp, dialogue, it’s an absolute laugh riot, even if the Minecraft stuff bogs it down a bit. It’s not really all that great of a movie, but all things considered, it could have been a lot worse, and a lot less funny. When it comes to a Minecraft movie, of all things, I’ll take any entertainment I can get.

My rating: 6/10

A Minecraft Movie will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, April 3.

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