Going into “A Minecraft Movie” last night, I had very few expectations for the film. Every trailer that I had seen had prepared me for a mediocre movie with cliche lines, boring dialogue, and a very odd representation of a video game that I had grown up with. What the trailers did not prepare me for was possibly the most fun movie theater experience I’ve ever had. From the beginning though, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: This was not a good movie. It was very fun, and incredibly entertaining, but not a good movie at all. It had a very certain charm though, and I want to dive deeper into that.
First off, I think the choice to make this movie in live action was a very poor one. The amount of CGI and visual effects they used in this movie was enough that they probably could’ve animated the whole thing and it wouldn’t have changed very much. The casting choices were more amusing than anything, Jack Black and Jason Momoa had this weird enemies to lovers trope going on, and I actually don’t think I remember a single detail about most of the other characters, which I’ll touch on more later. But pretty much everyone and everything else was 3D-rendered. I think this movie definitely would’ve been better on the visual side if it was fully animated, the live action people look almost out of place next to things like villagers and ghasts. I suppose they are out of place though, the whole premise is humans getting taken to the “Minecraft” world. So maybe it checks out, I don’t know anymore.
The characters seemed mostly forgettable. Really the only ones that I remembered anything about by the end of the film were Steve (played by Jack Black), Garett (played by Jason Momoa), and Dawn (played by Danielle Brooks). To be frank, the last two actors I had to look up their character’s names in the movie, if that gives you any idea of how poorly written they seem. These three were more memorable than really any of the others, since they were either the main character of the game (Steve), or their personality was one thing (Garett), or they had some insane side gig going on that raised more questions than it provided answers (Dawn). Honorable mentions for characters go to the kid that accidentally committed an act of terrorism at the beginning and got away with it scot free, and the side plot with a villager getting hit by a car and falling in love with the woman in the car. What a strange movie.
Something that I would regret if I didn’t mention was the theater experience itself. The trailers for this movie were regarded by many as a cultural phenomenon because of a number of inside jokes on the internet about the trailers and promotional material. Upon watching the movie, at every point where there was a funny line or something very cliche that happened, the theater would break out into cheers and applause, and this happened probably over a dozen times. As a friend said upon leaving the theater, it was “downright rowdy in there.”
Long story short, if you’re looking for a good movie, this isn’t it for you. If you want a movie that you can point and laugh at how bad it is, this is one hundred percent the movie for you. Never before have I felt such a sense of comradery with random strangers than I had in that theater last night. The actual movie itself was probably two out of five stars, but the viewing experience was a five out of five stars, easily. “A Minecraft Movie” is currently only available in theaters, but will eventually be released on MAX.
