A Minecraft Movie: A Futile Exercise in Creativity

When it comes to video game adaptations, they tend to be hit or miss. Meanwhile, when it comes to video games, there is perhaps no bigger blank slate than ‘Minecraft.’ That fact can be a double-edged sword as the question becomes how to make something out of arguably next to nothing? Full of cutesy characters and environments, both clearly make good fodder for a film geared for children and families. The result of this is A Minecraft Movie, a film whose authenticity of the property is adapting begins and ends with its title. Now it goes without saying, the irony of a film based on a game about creativity not being creative is not all that surprising, but a film that could have been a layup under the right circumstances is saddled with a terrible and unfunny script, a nonexistent story, and phoned-in performances. Offering enough in the way of window dressing to entertain younger audiences in the moment, the lack of actual substance becomes apparent from the start. Producing thin characters and beating audiences over the head with countless tropes and exposition, there is little adventure to be had, or at least one worth caring about. Utterly unremarkable in every conceivable way, it is best to just move on.

A Minecraft Movie saw four misfits whose unfortunate circumstances, that don’t essentially matter to the story, took them to world of Minecraft. A world built on the power of imagination, washed-up former video game prodigy Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), sister and younger brother Natalie (Myers) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen), and real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks) found themselves trapped in a cubic wonderland as far as the eye can see. Everything was cubed, from the environments, creatures, and even to its residents. Little did they know, the Overworld also had a dark side, throwing evil piglins, zombies, and wolves into the mix. Forced to navigate their mysterious new world, our misfits would not need to do it alone. Joining them on their journey, the infamous Steve (Black) served as a guide, contributing his unique knowledge and insight. Given a highly expositionary backstory primarily serving to set up the world of Minecraft, he takes a backseat and is never given a chance to shine. A conduit as it relates to the characters and the antagonist, the plot is basically meaningless, mostly relying on lazy writing full of clichés and derivative tropes to move things along at a pace that will almost certainly do its job for younger audiences but for others, they will be left wondering what the point of it all truly was.

Leaning once again on the concept of a series of shared adversity as a means of developing characters, the film can basically be described as stuff happening to Garrison, Steve, Natalie, Henry, and Dawn in order to predictably move them along to where everyone knows they will ultimately be when it is all set and done. While far from the newest concept by any means or one that hasn’t already been used millions of times before, the absolute mindlessness of its execution here will test the patience of audiences fed up with what little it has to offer. Presenting little in the way of excitement, built on a foundation that runs counter to the spirit of its source material, the sheer lack of creativity and imagination on display is quite remarkable. Starting off with horrendous writing that merely snowballs and quickly picks up steam as it envelops everything in its path, there is little to no reason to care about anyone or anything that happens across its 100-minute runtime. Similarly, the film is nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. Tackling any film geared towards younger audiences can often be a fine line, trying to find a balance in appealing to young and old alike. Besides the aforementioned issues with its lack of creativity and imagination, its attempts to aim higher result in nothing but the most cringeworthy moments, be it the writing itself and/or the delivery of said questionable lines of dialog.

Rounding out A Minecraft Movie, not much could be said about its performances, because not much is being provided from anyone. Simply going through the motions, the actors, for the most part, seem disinterested in the material they are given, each giving it varying degrees of a lift based on their respective comedic timing. When it comes to comedic timing, the first name that comes to mind is of course Jack Black and to his credit, as Steve, he does somewhat succeed but there is no getting away from how bad the material really is. On the other hand, Momoa, delivers what is easily one of the worst performances of the year so far as Garrison. His charisma, along with his overcommitment, only worked against him, doubling down on the bad material to the point of being more painful than entertaining to watch. Finally, Jennifer Coolidge appears in a limited role as an utterly unnecessary character that adds nothing to the plot other than one of the worst scenes of the entire film. An actress with the kind of comedic timing normally worthy of overcoming most bad material, this was not the case here at no fault of hers.

In the end, A Minecraft Movie will undoubtedly provide some entertainment for younger audiences but is otherwise a futile exercise devoid of anything resembling thought or imagination.

still courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.