A Minecraft Movie
As someone who grew up loving rollercoasters and any ride that lifts you up into the air before smashing you down at dizzying speeds, I kinda thought that the neck strength I built over a childhood at Adventure World would last me well into my thirties. Alas, last week’s screening of A Minecraft Movie in Event Innaloo’s new 4DX cinema proved me spectacularly wrong.
It was an experience that made me hyper aware of my age from the get go as children filed into the screening and (what I assume was) a children’s TikTok influencer provided the pre-film entertainment. But after 100 minutes of feeling like a Baby Born with an egg in its brain cavity, I can confidently say that 4DX is only fun (for adults) for about half an hour. Coincidentally, so is the film.
Directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos, A Minecraft Movie is written by five people, from a story by three people, based on a video game about blocks (or ‘voxels’). The film features a bunch of people of varying ages and life situations whose storylines (I use that term loosely) converge in a realm called the Overworld, and who must work together to vanquish a hellish pig voiced by Rachel House.
The film’s three main characters each possess a different type of gaming ingenuity. First, we have Steve (Jack Black), an individual who “yearns for the mines” and who has Jumanjied his way into the Overworld to build his own paradise. Next, we have Garrett ‘The Garbage Man’ Garrison (Jason Momoa), a himbo who won an 80s video game championship and is still running on the fumes of that win despite having no mates and owning a failing video game store in Chuglass, Idaho. Lastly, we have Henry (Sebastian Eugene Hansen), a nerd at a new school who can build a jetpack but not real life friendships. With a MacGuffin in hand and some obligatory female supports (Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks), the gang set upon their quest.
As someone with zero prior Minecraft context, I left the film with little more than when I entered. The gist of my knowledge now is that there are Squidward-like villagers, pink sheep, chickens that get covered in lava and zombies that attack at night. When creatures are killed they comically turn into pork chops/steaks/roast chooks, and tall structures can be built from blocks of mined resources. My friend Courtney, when tasked with succinctly explaining the game to me, summed it up as “digital Lego” and I suppose parts of the film confirm that.
But other parts - the parts I prefer - are just chaotic nonsense with no real reason for existing other than to make the film more tolerable for adults. Jason Momoa carries the comedy on his burly shoulders as an overgrown loser cut from the same cloth as Billy Mitchell in The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Guest appearances from Jennifer Coolidge and Jemaine Clement provide absurdity and irreverence, and the film in general has a wonderful sense of dumb humour. Your mileage may vary but if you enjoy basking in low stakes stupidity from time to time like I do, then you should at least be tickled by some of the film’s jokes.
Now that I’ve paid A Minecraft Movie some overly generous praise, let’s talk about its flaws, the most prominent of which is the overwhelming sense of familiarity you feel while watching it. That high saturation, high brightness palette of the newer Jumanji movies; that attempt at Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves wit and team banter that doesn’t quite hit; that curious Free Guy interpretation of a video game made by people who’ve never played a video game (okay, I can’t really make that last claim but plenty of Minecraft fans have). My lack of gaming experience notwithstanding, A Minecraft Movie does feel like a corporation decided to bastardise a wildly popular IP assuming it had an in-built fanbase. I don’t hate the film but I reckon if I knew any better, I would.
The film also overstays its welcome by about 20 minutes which, if you decide for some reason to see it in 4DX, is a rather painful, drawn out 20 minutes. By the time it arrived at its Thor: Ragnarok-coded climax I was distracted with calculations of how long it’d take me to get home, and if I’d need to see a physio the next day. I suspect seeing the film in normal seats would yield fairly similar results, but I don’t care enough to test this hypothesis myself. There’s also apparently a post-credits scene with a famous Minecraft character but since my cultural rebellion is refusing to stick around and be a franchise simp, I’ve no idea if that’s worth your time.
I wasn’t really expecting A Minecraft Movie to offer much more than a few giggles and a gimmicky experience and since it doesn’t, I can’t say I’m particularly disappointed. It does feel more like the dreaded C word (content) than a film that had a script and a multi-act structure, and perhaps that’s a choice made with the target audience in mind. I probably won’t remember anything from it besides Jennifer Coolidge’s scenes and Jason Momoa’s wig, but my neck pain didn’t last too long either so I’m calling that an entirely neutral experience.
Verdict
☆☆½
A Minecraft Movie is in cinemas and scary cinemas now.
