Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all-time, but I’ve never really played it. I gave it a shot once and found that I prefer games where I can shoot or body slam people and don’t have to think about building stuff. However, I’ve always appreciated the creativity of those who play it on the regular, and felt that the surreal, blocky open world would be great on the silver screen. That said, a movie has been a very long time coming. For over a decade, filmmakers Shawn Levy, Peter Sollett, and Rob McElhenney (yes, that one) were attached, and so was actor Steve Carell for a time. But everything finally came together with Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, whose unusual, stream-of-consciousness comedic style proved to be the piece that was needed all along.
A Minecraft Movie is super weird, but in a good way. Hess’ movies have never really been my bag, not even the wrestling comedy Nacho Libre, but he’s hit on something quirky and fun just by embracing how strange the world of Minecraft is. A reunion with Nacho Libre star Jack Black who plays the iconic Minecraft blockhead Steve, the film shows that he was always a creative sort with an eye towards building things. He longs to enter a dangerous mine shaft where kids are banned. As an adult with a dead-end job with no creative stimulation, Steve remembers that he can actually enter that mine shaft now and does so.
He turns up in Overworld where he can literally build anything he puts his mind to. Steve befriends a wolf named Dennis, and runs afoul of the evil pig Malgosha (Rachel House), who wants the magical orb he’s found. Instead, Steve has Dennis hide it in the real world, where it’s found by washed-up 1980s gamer Garrett “the Garbage Man” Garrison, played by a rocked-out Jason Momoa. He needs cash, and that orb looks pretty darn expensive. Unfortunately, it’s activated by the bright, shy kid Henry (Sebastian Hansen), and along with his big sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and their realtor/alpaca enthusiast friend Dawn (Danielle Brooks) are drawn into Overworld. There, they encounter Steve, who guides them on the long and dangerous journey home battling piglins, zombies, and other Minecraft weirdness. The pink goats and panda families are cute, though, and there are lots of chickens that make a nice meal when roasted in lava. See, weird.
A Minecraft Movie accomplishes the feat of capturing the “anything can happen” spirit of the game. The thing about Minecraft is that you can’t make a simple, straight-forward movie about it because the game experience is different for everybody. You get out of it what you put into it, basically. So it makes sense for Hess and an army of screenwriters to just build the most bizarre movie they can, and accentuate the parts of the game that everybody loves. In this world, creativity is essential to surviving, and the movie celebrates ingenuity and the creative spirit. Of course, Steve is “the man” around Overworld but Henry, a lot like Emmett from The Lego Movie, shows he’s got what it takes to be a master builder, too.
For Black and Momoa, A Minecraft Movie is the perfect vehicle for them to just go nuts and be total dorks. Black commits to everything, whether he’s doing serious drama (which he’s good at sparingly) or stuff that’s totally crazy like this. He even indulges in a few songs, although nothing that hits like his earworm-worthy “Peaches” from The Super Mario Movie. Momoa, decked out in a fringed jacket, rockin’ long, flowing locks and shades permanently attached to his face, sets aside the superhero physicality to play this self-absorbed manchild whose brain is permanently stuck in the ’80s.
For everyone else, it’s tough to make an impression with Black and Momoa crowding them out. The only co-star who really registers is Jennifer Coolidge, playing Henry’s chatty, horny Vice Principal who goes on a date with an Overworld straggler who has wandered into our world. It’s exactly the kind of airheaded performance we want from her, and she delivers.
The story doesn’t amount to much, though. You’re just kind of there for the performances and to the general strangeness that is Minecraft, and that’s fine. There’s plenty of action but it just sort of happens with little explanation as to what’s happening, and with even less sense that any of these encounters matter. It does get exhausting, but by the time that happens A Minecraft Movie has probably already won over fans who are just happy to see their favorite game successfully brought to the screen.
A Minecraft Movie opens in theaters on April 4th from Warner Bros.
