The Plot: Following the death of their mother, Natalie (Emma Myers) and her younger brother Henry (Sebastian Hansen) move to a new town. There they come into contact with wild man and former video game champion Garrett (Jason Momoa). While playing with a mystical orb in Garrett’s shop, they’re sucked into another world – a cubic wonderland known as the Overworld. To find their way home, they will need the assistance of a miner known as Steve (Jack Black) and avoid encounters with the evil Malgosha (Rachel House)…
The Verdict: The graveyard of videogame adaptations is littered with the corpses of wannabe quest makers looking to forge a new identity, either trying too hard or not trying hard enough. All that shiny armour falls apart under the glare of a large cinema screen, as making that transition from interactive videogame to passive cinema experience doesn’t translate into box office gold. It’s not something that particularly bothers Jared Hess and his adaptation of Minecraft, unpretentiously titled A Minecraft Movie – with an emphasis on the ‘A’. It’s a sandbox, world-building videogame with a blocky angle and for full disclosure, that’s the full extent of this reviewer’s knowledge of it. The giant question mark left hanging in the Overworld then is whether it can reach beyond its core audience and just be an enjoyable slice of Hollywood popcorn entertainment.
On the anarchic evidence presented the answer would appear to be yes, but with some caveats. ‘This world makes no sense’ mutters Natalie at one point, unable to quite process what is unfolding before her eyes as she’s introduced to blocky villagers and their golem robots. That’s just the launchpad for a wild ride through this environment that also includes zombies, pig overlords in the dark world of The Nether and buckets of stuff that makes not a lick of sense. Natalie’s comment is very much applicable to the film, which is perhaps why it gets by mostly on the crackling energy of its cast including an outsized Jack Black leaning into his Tenacious D rockstar persona and Jason Momoa as laid back and cool as he is in real life. They’re essentially there to carry the film between worlds and provide some sort of narrative anchor amidst the non-stop mayhem. The younger cast members play second fiddle but hold their own.
Hess made cult classic Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre (also with Black) and there is a sense here of a director geeking out and just playing around in this do-anything, create-anything studio sandbox where nothing is off the table. The script doesn’t particularly bear scrutiny and would likely fall apart at the seams if picked at. This is an effects-heavy film too, so there’s the danger of pixel overload and exhaustion. It’s as if Hess knew that this isn’t going to be the one videogame adaptation to rule them all and is unfazed about trying to big it up and be something significant. His goal appears to be more about just grabbing that mystical orb, running with it and throwing what he can at the screen to see what sticks.
Some of it slides off in a gooey mess, like the bizarre sub-plot involving Jennifer Coolidge invoking Stifler’s Mom as she goes on a date with an unexpected encounter. A good bit of it sticks though as it moves towards a madcap The Lord Of The Rings-style showdown (convenient since there’s a lot of New Zealand talent involved). A Minecraft Movie is cubed madness, but in an enjoyably daft way that doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is. For that alone, it earns some bonus points and a power-up for a possible sequel hinted at in the post-credits scene.
Rating: 3 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor
In short: Cubed madness
Directed by Jared Hess.
Starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Rachel House.