I never expected the Jack Black and Jason Momoa-led A Minecraft Movie to be good, but it’s somehow worse than imaginable.
Video game movies have a rocky history. There have been some god-awful entries to the genre, such as 1993’s Super Mario Bros., and then more tolerable ones, like the Tom Holland-led Uncharted.
Someone like Jack Black — who starred in the tolerable Super Mario Bros. Movie — should know better than to sign on to A Minecraft Movie. There was little upside, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
A Minecraft Movie is less of a movie so much as a sequence of loosely connected scenes with “comedic” subplots — like Jennifer Coolidge’s romance angle — inter-spliced. Never has a movie felt more made for the TikTok generation, which is troubling.
Even more concerning is that it took five writers to create this. A Minecraft Movie’s underlying theme is about unlocking creativity, something the film itself fails to do. It’s important to practice what you preach. Perhaps that’s why the movie stinks so badly.
Somehow, A Minecraft Movie has been in development for years, and frankly, it could have used a few more. This underbaked video game adaptation will appease kids, who all went nuts for the post-credits scene. But the humor is somehow geared more towards adults, who may chuckle at the occasional butt joke (even for a Jared Hess joint, A Minecraft Movie has a lot of them).
A Minecraft Movie aims to be the next Jumanji series, but it is no better than The Emoji Movie.
A Minecraft Movie review — What’s it about?
Years ago, a young outcast, Steve (played by Jack Black as an adult), was too talented for an impotent life. As a kid, he discovered a mine shaft with a portal. He was sent away as a kid, but as an adult, he managed to avoid the high-level security and make it to the Overworld.
There, he becomes a master crafter. He finally finds purpose in his life, building breathtaking landscapes. He eventually stumbles into Malgosha (Rachel House), who captures him and wants to make the Overworld gloomy (you will never guess her origin story).
But before getting into the Overworld, we meet four misfits who end up on an adventure. Natalie (Emma Myers) is a young girl tasked with taking care of her younger brother, Henry (Sebastian Hansen), who is a physics whiz after the death of their mother.
So, she takes a social media marketing job at a local potato chip company in a small town. Henry eventually stumbles on Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison’s (Jason Momoa) video game shop, somewhat befriending the former gaming legend.
Garrett, while once a prodigy and a local hero, is running a failing business. Out of desperation, he buys a storage unit at an auction, hoping to find an Atari he can flip. Instead, he discovers the magical orbs — one of them looks like the Tesseract from the Avengers series — which he initially disregards.
After getting in trouble at school, Henry enlists Garrett to act as his uncle to get him out of trouble. Back at the shop, Henry is intrigued by the orbs. He activates them, leading them to find the portal to the Overworld, where Natalie and their real estate agent, Dawn (Danielle Brooks), follow.
They then team up with Steve to save the Overworld from the villainous Malgosha.
The lead performances
Black does not offer more than his usual performances. He still shouts the last word of every other sentence, and Black brings his Kung Fu Panda skills to live-action in the fight scenes.
Of course, he also has his obligatory power ballad in A Minecraft Movie (it wouldn’t be a Jack Black movie without one). Director Jared Hess has worked with Black before on Nacho Libre, and it feels like he gave him free rein when it came to crafting his performance.
This is certainly a different take on Steve than expected. While Jack Black wears the iconic baby blue shirt, nothing about his performance screams “Steve.”
He does appear to be having fun with Momoa, who gives a similarly carefree performance. Momoa has never been known as an actor with much gravitas, and he doesn’t build his case with A Minecraft Movie.
Somehow, Garrett remains one of the most complex roles he has played. He is a loser, but he finds purpose during his adventure in the Overworld.
If there was one highlight, it’s the bromance between Black and Momoa’s characters. Most of their jokes are meant for the poor parents who took their kids to see A Minecraft Movie during the Saturday matinee. Some work better than others, but there is some entertainment value in their ridiculous back and forth.
Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks get the short end of the stick
Myers and Brooks get sidelined for most of A Minecraft Movie. They are there for some comic relief, but they don’t get anything interesting to do.
It’s clear A Minecraft Movie strives to recreate the magic of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. While both projects share Jack Black, Momoa is not The Rock, and Myers and Brooks are not Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan.
Myers, best known for her Wednesday fame, doesn’t get to establish her relationship with her on-screen brother. She supposedly brings an innovative social media mind to the old-school company she joins, but the movie doesn’t showcase this.
It’s a shame because that would have helped A Minecraft Movie convey its message. They want to talk about unlocking creativity, and Natalie lacks it (the boat she creates in the Overworld is a basic block), as the film does.
Maybe as a kid, she was more creative like her brother. Perhaps being thrust into a parental role sucked the creativity out of her. Either way, we will never know since the five writers behind the film opted against exploring the character more.
A TikTok generation movie
The lack of backstory for the characters may be attributed to A Minecraft Movie being constructed for the TikTok generation. It’s built like a film they want moviegoers to scroll on their phones while watching. In most cases, that is an inexcusable cardinal sin of going to a theater. However, in this case, it’d be hard to be mad at anyone for having their attention go elsewhere.
There is no better example of A Minecraft Movie being made for the TikTok generation than a critical scene in the third act. A character comes to after being taken out of action.
However, they do not show the character waking up from their coma. Instead, there is a jarring cut to them embracing another character. I’d like to imagine moviegoers can sit through 20 seconds of a character waking up. Evidently, the filmmakers did not have that same trust.
Even some of the verbiage used by the writers screams trying to be relevant amongst the generation. The phrase “unalive you” is used unironically, and the film is stitched together like a cheap suit.
Jennifer Coolidge’s bit role
Take Coolidge’s role in the project, for example. She plays the vice principal of Henry’s school, Marlene, who falls in love with a Villager from the game.
Having someone like Coolidge in your movie should be a blessing. But her subplot is one of the worst parts of A Minecraft Movie. I don’t know what the writers were thinking when they pitched the idea.
It would have been a home run if Coolidge got to go to the Overworld. Instead, she is stuck in scenes used as a break from the mind-numbing main adventure.
Maybe they are saving her journey to the Overworld for the inevitable sequel. There is no doubt that despite how horrible it is, A Minecraft Movie will make lots of money and get a sequel green-lit.
Practicing what you preach
Again, it feels hypocritical of A Minecraft Movie to preach about unlocking creativity. It encourages it so much and fails to show any of its own.
The main storyline is a by-the-numbers riff on Jumanji, and Coolidge’s subplot is the only out-of-the-box thinking the writers did with the plot.
I doubt anyone expected A Minecraft Movie to reinvent the wheel (it would be naive to do so). Still, more was expected from it visually. The Overworld looks like a Minecraft world, sure, but it looks obnoxiously fake during any of the action scenes.
Players of the game spend hours building their creations. Somehow, A Minecraft Movie doesn’t show a lot of crafting. But don’t worry — they do make brief references to the game that players will recognize, like when the main characters have an exposition-filled first night in the Overworld, explaining the 20-minute timeframe nighttime takes place during in the game.
Should you watch A Minecraft Movie?
Regardless of what I say, A Minecraft Movie is poised to make millions at the box office. Even as someone who didn’t play the game, I can’t imagine loyal players will be pleased with this adaptation.
The game itself is a key to unlocking creativity. It encourages players to make the creations in their minds become real, and the possibilities for a movie are endless.
Instead, Hess and Co. deliver a lifeless adaptation to the big screen. Blank checks were likely handed out like candy; it shows when you have an aimless movie like this.
It makes you fear that Hess’ days of his own creativity are long gone. Over two decades have passed since his glory days of Napoleon Dynamite, and the same could almost be said of Black and Nacho Libre.
Ultimately, some of the blame has to go to the tone-deaf studio executives who misunderstood what fans wanted from a movie about Minecraft. I doubt having Jack Black regurgitate the same performance he has given for the better part of two decades while Momoa tries his hand at being funny was on the list of many.
Nowadays, content creators curate their posts to hit the algorithm right. It’s all part of the game, and A Minecraft Movie does the bare minimum to create a box office success and nothing more.
Grade: F
A Minecraft Movie will be released on April 4.
The post A Minecraft Movie preaches creativity without any of its own (Review) appeared first on ClutchPoints.
