The oddball spirit and sensibilities of Jared Hess shine through in A Minecraft Movie and help carry it through its rough patches, particularly those where it is required to be a Minecraft movie.
The Napoleon Dynamite director helms this energetic adventure comedy, based around the massively popular Minecraft, the sandbox title — that means the goal of the game is basically just to hang out in its universe — which ranks as bestselling video game of all-time.
He kicks it off with so much left-of-center pizazz that it's almost a shame it has to enter the Minecraft world, because what he builds early on has a bizarro charm all its own, tater-tot humor and all.
Jason Momoa plays Garrett Garrison, a washed-up former video game prodigy known as The Garbage Man due to his proficiency playing Hunk City Rampage, a Bad Dudes-like arcade fighting game.
Sporting a pink leather jacket, wraparound shades and a Theo Von mullet, he's still hanging onto what little notoriety he has left, like a hair metal castoff deemed irrelevant once Nirvana came along. His dazed dude bro vibes fit the movie perfectly.
Garrison opens a retro video game store in fictional Chuglass, Idaho, which is where he meets Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a new-to-town kid who has trouble making friends at school.
On a shelf in the store, Henry finds a mysterious glowing orb — hey, the plot has to kick into gear somehow, right? — that opens up a portal between the real world and the Minecraft world, and they find themselves sucked into the realm of the game.
Inside the Minecraft landscape, a sort of creator's utopia where everything is built of blocks, the gang — which also includes Henry's older sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and their real estate agent, Dawn (Oscar nominee Danielle Brooks) — comes across Steve (Jack Black), who has made his home inside the world of Minecraft. (It was his orb that Henry came across.)
Now they've got to work together to defeat the in-game bad guys, exit the game and return to the real world.
There are open portals are causing havoc between the two dimensions, and all sorts of typical video game crossover mumbo jumbo.
To its credit, A Minecraft Movie — notably it's not The Minecraft Movie, although that could just be semantics — never takes itself or its subject matter seriously. It's paper thin and could all blow away with a gust of air, and Hess treats it as such.
But it's never snarky or cynical. It's a wholesome comedy for kids and families with messages about teamwork and friendship, it carries a PG rating, and it's not trying to slip anything past anyone.
There is plenty of Minecraft to wow young fans of the game, and there's enough bits of weirdo humor to make the movie feel like it was made by individuals and not a committee of consultants or shareholders.
Black, reuniting with Hess after 2006's Nacho Libre, is his usual high-energy self, and he and Momoa make a formidable team.
Jennifer Coolidge is also on board, offering transmissions from Planet Coolidge, and giving hilarious line readings about Jeep Grand Cherokees.
There's a great comedy in here somewhere that has nothing at all to do with Minecraft, which just shows that as a storyteller, Hess has plenty of gas left in his tank.
A Minecraft Movie does its job, using the platform of the game to shine a light back on the people who made it. It's about the players, not the game. – By Adam Graham/The Detroit News/Tribune News Service
Summary:
Kids will love it, adults wouldn't mine, sorry, mind it.
