A Minecraft Movie, which opens in theaters this Friday, hopes to continue proving that video game adaptations are no longer a bad idea. According to the first reviews of the live-action adventure, it’s at least halfway there. Many critics acknowledge that A Minecraft Movie works for its young target audience, maybe even for some of their parents, while others believe it could have been more imaginative and original. However, the more negative-leaning reviews at least recognize the fun in Jack Black, Jason Momoa, and Jennifer Coolidge’s performances.
Here’s what critics are saying about A Minecraft Movie:
I actually liked A Minecraft Movie. I’m as surprised as you are.
It’s everything you ever needed.
It is with some relief to discover that A Minecraft Movie not only doesn’t suck but is also rather fun, its exuberant colour palette and playfully irreverent vibe turning what could have been a cynical exercise in brand proliferation into a goofily knockabout caper for both the young and the young at heart.
I had a good idea of what to expect from A Minecraft Movie. And I’m glad to say, for my tastes, it met those expectations well.
A Minecraft Movie will meet everyone’s expectations for a live-action video game adaptation — both good and bad… It may frustrate viewers who saw films like Barbie or The Lego Movie and are expecting something more than cursory development.
Given how disastrous this could have been — especially after that underwhelming first trailer — [it’s] a best-case scenario.
Call it “lowered expectation,” but it’s a wannabe blockbuster that falls short of its potential while also rising well above similar fare, which put almost no effort into their production outside of hitting enough references to satisfy a loyal fan base.
It’s not like the expectations for this film were high, but it doesn’t even do the bare minimum of entertaining. It was more of a chore to get through than it was actually enjoyable.
It’s a respectable video game adaptation.
In a world of such factory-line adaptations, there’s more of an identity here, even if it’s a mindless one.
It’s the faintest of praise to say that A Minecraft Movie is the best video game movie Jack Black has made in the last year, since the previous film he starred in was Borderlands.
A Minecraft Movie isn’t nearly as good as The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It’s not even as good as Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — which, given the latter’s 50-year-old pedigree, might be described as the analog version of a video game movie. A Minecraft Movie is just a flaky, spirited, low-hijinks quest comedy.
Some of the best game movies — Jumanji, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves — have the same things in common: they’ve got a good amount of adventure sprinkled with heart, humor, and genuinely good characters. I wish I could say A Minecraft Movie had any of these things besides the adventure part.
It’s obviously a video game adaptation made for the sole purpose of making an easy payday for a studio.
The game’s established visual aesthetic translates nicely to the screen, with well-rendered visual effects bringing cubist sheep, warrior pigs, and other wild creations to life.
[Nothing in] A Minecraft Movie ever feels like it matters. Yet it’s no insult to say that, in this case, that may be more true than not to the spirit of a video game that turns life into a blockhead version of itself.
A Minecraft Movie is a breezy, passable adaptation that captures the spirit of what makes the game so addictive.
The Overworld is flattened into a colorful backdrop for a painfully generic adventure, rather than used as a tool for unrestrained ingenuity.
Embracing the game’s chaotic playstyle would have been a great way to adapt Minecraft for the screen, which makes me wonder why Hess opted instead to hit the hollow beats of every quest movie ever made.
A video game involving unlimited expansion and creativity shouldn’t yield a film adaptation this rote and uninvolving.
(Photo by ©Warner Bros.)
Even if you have very little familiarity with Minecraft, A Minecraft Movie will not defy your comprehension.
Those painfully unaware of the world of Minecraft and the mechanics of how the game operates are quickly informed through Jack Black’s lengthy (and occasionally hilarious) opening narration.
Various scenarios [are] designed to be familiar to Minecraft players — if you miss a reference, don’t worry, Black is sure to point it out.
Even as a novice, I felt the movie did a solid job of explaining the mechanics of the world.
Thanks to the exuberant cast and the kind of contagious entertainment they dispensed, you may just come to love something you didn’t know a lick about 101 minutes earlier.
If you’re not already invested in the concept from the games, it’s tough to care… For a layman like myself, it was just a grueling experience to get through.
Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess is the right choice to helm this film, which leans into its ridiculousness and rarely takes itself seriously.
Hess’s previous successes include 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite, and there is a whiff of that pic’s deadpan absurdity in some of this one’s more outlandish and quirkier moments.
Most of that fun stems from the moments when A Minecraft Movie actually feels like it was made by the guy behind Napoleon Dynamite.
While I’m not the biggest fan of Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, A Minecraft Movie works best in those moments that you realize it was directed by the same person (Jared Hess).
If the film has only one heart powering it, it probably belongs to director Jared Hess… [Nacho Libre] was his first collaboration with Black, and features the same comic and aesthetic sensibility as A Minecraft Movie.
Black and Hess, who are reuniting for the first time in almost twenty years since their last film, Nacho Libre, sadly struggle to recapture any of the magic that was once there.
Hess’s early success was rooted in a deliberately askew visual grammar that worked in an indie medium, but with a studio extravaganza, it often simply translates as — well, a Starburst commercial… But those who can buy into Hess’s sensibility will get a nostalgic kick.
The story is as simple as you can expect, but it’s never boring.
It’s a paint-by-numbers plot so unashamedly mashed together from The Lord of the Rings and The LEGO Movie that WB might have to sue itself.
A little more craft on the storytelling side could have elevated this to something special a la Dungeons and Dragons from 2023, but it’s an enjoyable if hectic experience nonetheless.
The plot fails to service all of [the characters] effectively (on a narrative level, you wouldn’t really miss Dawn or Garrett if they weren’t there).
The screenplay is a jumbled mess of clichéd storylines presented in a multitude of family films that have come before it.
Sadly, a lot of the plotting and associated themes get severely muddled in the back half, where the five screenplay credits start to make a little more sense.
A Minecraft Movie never stops goofing on itself, and that’s appealing.
In parts, [it] had me laughing out loud.
A Minecraft Movie will have folks splitting their sides with laughter as fast as blocks are broken and reset for the next swerve and gag.
Laughs shouldn’t come as a surprise. Hess, after all, laid a lot of groundwork for early internet humor with his 2004 indie comedy Napoleon Dynamite.
Jared Hess and his humor can be an acquired taste, even his beloved Napoleon Dynamite, and this isn’t a movie on the level of a Barbie or even a LEGO Movie, in terms of the humor.
While there are far more cleverly written gags than one would expect for A Minecraft Movie, a large amount of the humor is derived from Black’s exaggerated enunciations of Minecraft terminology which mostly land through the sheer memorability of it all.
You’d have to dig deep to find a laugh that doesn’t emanate from Momoa’s self-deprecating performance.
There wasn’t a single good joke in the entire film, and I usually enjoy Jack Black’s humor.
The best aspect of A Minecraft Movie is that its central theme is a celebration of creativity… It nicely reflects the core spirit of the game itself, which embraces an open-world concept allowing players to define their own experience.
A Minecraft Movie continues a rather post-modern trend of turning toy and video game franchises into feature films with deeper, more complicated messages.
Either disastrously ill-suited for its message about how money is the enemy of joy, or immaculately well-suited for its message about how much harder it is to build things than it is to destroy them, Hess’s film can’t help but feel like its very existence is an affront to the creative freedom that has allowed Minecraft to become such a vital form of self-exploration for kids around the world.
Minecraft lets him unleash his inner big kid in ways that inspire fond memories of his younger, pre-magnificient-salt-and-pepper-beard days.
He’s amped up to such an unprecedented degree of Jack Blackness that it makes his work in School of Rock look like a Bressonian exercise in restraint by comparison.
It’s funny (mostly) to see someone commit that wholeheartedly to the bit.
Jack Black is in full Nacho Libre mode as Steve. Virtually every line of dialogue from Jack Black is said in a half-yell and over-enunciated for comedic effect.
Black’s drastic facial contortions and vocal inflections for his line deliveries are coupled with his dancing, prancing, and posing body language — all emboldened by movement coach Alyx Duncan and Aquaman series stunt coordinator Jon Valera — present a fully unleashed performance from the comedy giant.
Whatever your feelings about Jack Black (I’m mostly a superfan), no one can ever say that he phones it in.
The secret weapon here is Jennifer Coolidge… She gives the film a Mel Brooks/Jeff Zucker energy.
Firing on all cylinders is a hilarious Jennifer Coolidge… [She] is, quite simply, a genius at this, and can do this stuff in her sleep, without the slightest suggestion of effort.
Coolidge is always a reliable source for laughs.
The secret weapon of A Minecraft Movie is actually Jason Momoa, whose Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison is an assortment of laugh-inducing riches.
The surprise of A Minecraft Movie is how much Jason Momoa gets onto the self-skewering doofus-kitsch wavelength.
Momoa’s herculean cartoonishness rescues the role from the faint stink of feeling like it was written for Chris Pratt, and he embraces the aggro insecurity of it all in a way that would make Jon Heder proud.
If it does anything, A Minecraft Movie marks the comedic coming of age of Momoa.
It has a tendency to ping pong along from scrape to scrape with little sense that it would matter much if you rearranged the various monster attacks or obstacles to be overcome in a different order.
The film could have done more with the mutating magic of it all. That’s where you wish Jared Hess were less of a comedian and more of a technological showman.
The lack of discernible geography is especially egregious for an adaptation of a video game centered on using space in creative ways.
Even kids — especially kids — will pick up on the disconnect between what they can make in Minecraft (anything they can imagine) and what Hess has made of Minecraft (nothing they haven’t seen before).
(Photo by ©Warner Bros.)
It’s suitable for almost all ages.
At its darkest moments, A Minecraft Movie never feels like it would scare the youngest viewer.
The size of the ensemble does create a unique found family dynamic that feels fresher than other kid fare… Most importantly, A Minecraft Movie knows who its core audience is.
Kids may not see what’s so funny about Jennifer Coolidge’s performance as a divorced principal who can’t stop hitting people with her Jeep Cherokee, but the White Lotus star is a perfect fit for Hess’ affectation-driven humor.
This is a film that is clearly aimed at kids, but even they weren’t laughing at the jokes or any of the character interactions.
It isn’t so much an “all ages” film as it is several disparate ones with wildly different target markets unfolding in close proximity.
Parents, rejoice. Of all the movies that your kids are going to drag you along to this summer, this one will go down easy.
A Minecraft Movie also has much more edgy humor than I expected from a PG-rated film, which will keep adults as engaged as their kids.
The silliness of A Minecraft Movie will appeal to kids who love the game, to adults who think fondly of this comedy era, and perhaps to few else.
It gives Jack Black and Jason Momoa carte blanche to wild out and be deeply silly. Your affection for and/or tolerance of this latter prospect will dictate to a large extent your enjoyment of this film.
A Minecraft Movie opens in theaters on April 4, 2025.
Thumbnail image by ©Warner Bros.
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