Another clunky, middling, and overly literal movie adopted from another popular video game title that saturates the screen with all its VFX and yet not enough heart. What’s next, Grand Theft Auto? Skyrim? Tetris? Wii Sports???
It seems like an everlasting cycle to retain this nostalgia effect, which continues to permeate the multiplex with a waning value. We have received the preposterous adaptation titles of Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, Max Payne, BloodRayne, and Mortal Kombat. Perhaps the sentiment isn’t that you cannot convert said material into a worthwhile onscreen product (Ready Player One, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves have proven themselves), but the post-psychological form doesn’t translate well into a confined two-hour motions picture. A proper setup with a superb core and then adding the elements of the game will make it intriguing, not the other way around. A Minecraft Movie falls trap to the latter, becoming another hollow, flaky comedy tale that plunges several folks into the “Overworld,” the epicenter of the Minecraft universe.
In this world, if you are not familiar with the game, you can break the blocks and build your (block) weapons, defenses, homesteads, or whatever the mind can conjure up. Yes, the environment, animals, and villagers are all block-shaped. But, at night, you have to defend yourself from the monsters that will hunt you down, blow up within proximity, or stare into your soul and rip you to shreds. And then there is another dark world called the “Nether,” where you encounter blockish pigs and other dark creatures. The game is very much a sandbox game, where you build or break blocks for eternity and see where victory leads.
Anyway, the plot follows four misfits entering the Overworld (through a teleporter in a mineshaft) after one of them locates the Orb of Dominance (aka that ripoff of the Tesseract from the Avengers) and the Earth Crystal. However, the pigling ruler of the Nether, Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House), wants the Orb to destroy the Overworld after despising creativity due to past bullying against her abilities to stand out. So, the four misfits and Steve (Jack Black) must head on a journey to work their way back home while protecting the Overworld from becoming subjugated to Malgosha’s tyranny. The four misfits include: Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), playing an outdated relic after being a video game champion many moons ago. You also have Henry (Sebastian Hansen) as a creative young stud and his older sister Natalie (Emma Myers), and Dawn (Danielle Brooks), who is a real estate agent who has many side hustles, which include opening a zoo.
Black brings his daffiness in full swing, but Momoa sinks well into his character’s clueless, narcissistic elements while retaining a 90s aesthetic in a nifty fashion—the more time you spend with these two, the more the fun meshes well together. Unfortunately, Brooks is terribly wasted here while Hansen and Myers coast along. Folks will remember Dennis, the wolf-dog the most; you can’t go wrong with a good boy pup. But, the movie almost represses audiences with a bombastic amount of exposition while delivering several underwritten characters, and it never shifts out of gear into a spoofy, fun time. Sometimes, you’re in the heart of the thrills for a family-friendly good time; sometimes, you’re dragging along, begging for a new development. Concomitantly, the significant beats feel expeditious and lethargic. This did not warrant five screenwriters dabbling into the source material.
At the end of the day, someone at Warner Brothers had an avarice to make another video-game adaption radiate onscreen. Still, it will become another tchotchke on the collection shelves and not one with a lot of substance. Yes, there is mileage to get from the fun, chaotic atmosphere and Momoa and Black’s performances, but this is insufficient to carry a film with middling visuals, one-dimensional characters, and another bludgeoning reliance on IP exploitation. A Minecraft Movie is another blockheaded cash-in.
(Oh, and even though it was left out, we probably would have had more jollification sitting with Jennifer Coolidge’s onscreen vice-principal character having a relationship with a Minecraft villager.)
