For nearly 15 years, Minecraft has been a popular digital playground for players who love its open-world setup and iconic blocky design. But after more than a decade languishing in development hell, its big-screen adaptation arrives with the narrative depth of a forgettable side quest.

 

For the duration of A Minecraft Movie, Jack Black and Jason Momoa strain and sweat to inject life into a computerised landscape, their performances bouncing manically off a green screen void filled in with cube-shaped, computer-generated wildlife. Amid the current entertainment landscape of IP-driven titles or unambitious remakes, it’s not hard to imagine studio boardrooms full of a dozen more of these algorithm-driven adaptations.

 

One imagines this hollowness wasn’t the aim of director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite), but such is the state of franchise filmmaking today. Despite the valiant efforts of its cast, A Minecraft Movie lacks the very spark of creativity that made its source material a global phenomenon. Instead, it’s another example of Hollywood shoving a beloved property into the factory (cube-shaped) mould, hoping name recognition will be enough to justify its existence.

The film opens with a clunky, exposition-heavy prologue narrated by Black as the game’s iconic blocky hero, Steve. We get a by-the-numbers backstory about his childhood obsession with exploring mine shafts and his adult discovery of a magic, cubic orb (because spheres don’t exist in Minecraft), teleporting him into the pixelated video game so familiar to longtime fans.

 

Soon, Momoa’s washed-up video game champ, Garrett, and a handful of Idaho townies — Danielle Brooks as a real estate agent, Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen as a recently relocated brother-and-sister duo — somehow get spirited into the Minecraft world. Their only way home is a McGuffin in the form of an orb and a far-off portal, coupled with Steve’s reluctant guidance.

 

That is, of course, if they can get through a whole bunch of zombies, creepers and heavily armed pigs determined to stop them.

 

What follows is an adventure with all the emotional heft of a theme park ride, albeit one peppered with moments designed to elicit flickers of recognition from dedicated gamers. As characters bumble their way through familiar biomes and mechanics, one can imagine Minecraft fans experiencing a Pavlovian urge to point at the screen.

 

But once the fleeting novelty wears off, what remains is a movie caught in tonal limbo. It’s too convoluted for kids, too slight for adults and too self-aware to be taken seriously.

 

Much like the recent Jumanji entries, which also starred Black and also involved a disparate group of characters sucked into a game environment, A Minecraft Movie tries to balance adventure and meta-humour. But where those films succeeded because of sharply drawn characters and clearly defined stakes. This film’s script (credited to five writers!) features faux-earnest world-building undercut by “Haha, just kidding!” gags.

 

Momoa at least seems to be having fun, gamely spoofing his own gruff action hero persona, while Black throws himself into the role of Steve with the overcaffeinated energy of a man who abjectly refuses to phone it in.

In an amusing subplot, Jennifer Coolidge has some fun moments as a school vice principal, but her scenes feel so disconnected from the main story one wonders if it was edited in to pad the 101-minute runtime.

 

Ultimately, A Minecraft Movie is less a film than a brand extension. If this is the future of video game adaptations, maybe it’s time to shut down the mine shaft.

 

 

4/10 The kids will love it

Boluwatife Adesina
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Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.