“The children yearn for the mines.” It turns out the adults do too.
A Minecraft Movie was a true cinematic experience, one that took endless notes from Barbenheimer and Endgame before burning it all to the ground. Filmmakers saw coherent narrative and faithfulness to the games and threw them to the wind, cramming the run time with unfunny jokes that had absolutely no right to make a grown man laugh. Yet they did.
While we can delude ourselves that it was an ensemble cast, this film survived on Jack Black and Jason Momoa’s relationship – alongside a bazaar subplot with the ever-iconic Jennifer Coolidge. Departing from his typical one-liners and physical comedy, Jack Black transformed, embodying the new role of Jack Black in a blue T-shirt. If you don’t enjoy his slapstick sense of humour, this will be a tough watch. Even if you do, however, it will likely still be a tough watch, sitting through the “chicken jockey” scene amongst children aged 7-15.
Momoa stood out, providing an amusing butt-of-the-joke performance while taking the time to kick a few children in the process. There was nothing groundbreaking, but it was a typically charismatic performance.
Where the film was at its best was Coolidge’s romantic subplot. Endlessly hysterical and filthy, she can really do no wrong. Like much of the film, it made no narrative sense – but it was extremely enjoyable regardless. Though, it is a shame how endlessly spoiled her scenes were in the marketing, taking away from some of the surprises.
Cameos from popular Minecraft content creators LDShadowLady and DanTDM, alongside an ode to Technoblade, piled on the fan service. It was also a nice touch to have YouTuber Mumbo Jumbo use his experience within the game to create more ‘realistic’ Redstone contraptions. This was a great acknowledgement of the content that has kept Minecraft afloat all these years.
This is not a good film by any metric. But if you are willing to open your heart (and soul) to excessive amounts of whimsy, then it is certainly still an enjoyable time.