‘A Minecraft Movie’ — A lazy love letter to fans

Recent years have been something of a golden age for video game film adaptations. Rather than shy away from the essence of their source material, filmmakers are taking greater risks. With A Minecraft Movie, the reverence for the game is there, but what isn’t, is any form of cohesive storytelling, well-written dialogue, character development, internal logic, narrative momentum, satisfactory pacing or elements that would make for an enjoyable cinema experience.

Young siblings Natalie and Henry move to a new town after their mother’s passing, and after just 24 hours find themselves whisked away to a magical land, the overworld, where everything is cubed, and your only limitation is your imagination. Along for the ride is Jason Momoa’s Garrett, a has-been local celebrity; Danielle Brooks’ Dawn, a struggling realtor with a mobile zoo side hustle, and Jack Black’s Steve, a grown man who abandoned the human world to live out his days in the wilds of his magical home.

The characters are paper thin and the movie puts them through a fast-paced adventure that’s meant to bring them together as a found family unit. Their journey to get there is devoid of any meaningful conflict, but is chock-full of bad jokes, astonishingly bad visuals, and Jack Black high-kicking and singing his way through the banality of the script. His high-energy antics are usually a film’s saving grace, but here, it’s grating. He’s less of a feature in the film’s design and more of a glaring bug.

The film audaciously asks you to get invested in its story beats, despite them being rendered inert by the film itself. At one point, Jason Momoa’s character is demonstrably selfish, endangering the group for his personal gain by seeking riches in treacherous territory. His betrayal is needless, as the riches he sought are later shown as easily accessible. It’s one of several moments of the film that feel baffling to behold.

A Minecraft Movie is not a film, but more of an extended commercial with celebrity guests. The most disappointing part of its construction is the glimmers of potential you’ll see in it. The recreation of a blocky textureless world into a fully realised tactile environment is genuinely impressive, and while the humour is overwhelmingly more miss than hit, it does admittedly have some good laughs, especially since the tone is bordering on parody.

The film is constantly espousing the value of creativity, but A Minecraft Movie opts for the mundane and the trivial. Its audience will devour the constant references and zany humour, and its brightly coloured canvas will enamour kids of all ages. Parents, on the other hand, will have to strap in for 100 minutes of drivel. It’s especially disappointing that the film ends on a conflicting note, and essentially tells viewers to set aside creativity in the pursuit of soulless wealth, but I suppose that’s the movie in a nutshell.

Rating: Catch It On Cable

Damian Levy is a film critic and podcaster for Damian Michael Movies.