Ticketworthy! - A Minecraft Movie

A Minecraft Movie was almost a tough movie to review. It’s silly, overly self-referential, and sometimes downright nonsensical with little to no internal logic. On the other hand, I’ve just described the video game Minecraft. Which begs the question, should it be criticized for being kind of a dumb and pointless movie, or should it be praised because that’s basically what a movie based on Minecraft ought to be? Fortunately, there is one man brave enough to make that choice for us: Jack Black.

There’s no denying that Black is a comedy legend, but his turn in A Minecraft Movie as Steve is so over-the-top and weird that he manages to tip the whole film in the wrong direction single-handedly. Almost every time the script manages to deliver an interesting moment or starts to build on the other characters, there’s Steve with some ridiculous line delivery or song about cooking chickens with lava. It’s way too much. It feels like the entire movie is just background noise to justify his next big, crazy moment. A little restraint from Black, bringing it down just a couple of notches, could have gone a long way to making him feel like part of the movie instead.

The problem is especially noticeable because there is a fine example of how it should be done in the movie, in the form of Jason Momoa’s Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a washed-up former video game champion that sees the Overworld (the world of Minecraft in which our heroes find themselves trapped) as a literal goldmine that can solve all his financial issues. Garrett is arguably a sillier character than Steve, but Momoa gives some real sincerity and heart to the performance that keeps it balanced. He’s exaggerated, sure, but he still feels like a person.

The rest of the main cast does a fine enough job as well. Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers) serve as the young dreamer and the in-over-their head guardian that are staples of children’s fantasy movies. It’s a trope for a reason, it gives the audience characters to latch onto and relate with in the crazy fantasy world, and both actors play their part well. Danielle Brooks is also there, for some reason, as real-estate agent Dawn. Again, there’s nothing to complain about in her performance - the character just does not matter. No part of the movie would have been different without her.

As a group, their job is to sell you on the Overworld and make you care about the monsters threatening it. Despite Steve constantly undermining them, I think they pull it off pretty well. It helps that the whole thing looks about as good as one could hope. It’s not the greatest CGI in history, but making the world of Minecraft look good enough to not be distracting is an accomplishment in its own right.

All of this makes it more disappointing that the movie doesn’t really work. It has so many elements that are actually pretty good and could have made a really fun adaptation of a game I honestly wouldn’t have considered adaptable. Unfortunately, it bets big in Black’s performance, and suffers as a result. In Minecraft, what you can build is entirely dependent on what materials you use. In A Minecraft Movie, Jack Black was simply the wrong ingredient.