The ‘Minecraft’ Movie Is an Absolute Disaster Even Gaming Fans Will Hate

A Minecraft Movie is set in a world of limitless imagination, so it’s surprising to discover that Jared Hess’ big-screen adaptation of the immensely popular video game lacks even a shred of inspiration.

Constructed to satisfy tween fans of the franchise and to leave everyone else hanging on for dear life (and shaking their heads in exasperation) as it barrels from one nonsensical and inconsequential plot point to another, this fantasy epic melds live-action and CGI animation for a tale whose guiding purpose is to help extend Mojang Studios’ lucrative brand—and, also, to provide Jack Black and Jason Momoa with ceaseless opportunities for mugging. Block-headed from start to finish, it’s cinema in service of nothing more than IP exploitation.

Frantic barely describes the helter-skelter pace of A Minecraft Movie, which hits theaters April 4, beginning with a rat-a-tat-tat prologue about Steve (Black), a human who grew up wanting to be a miner and, in adulthood, made his dream a reality.

During an excavation, he discovered a cube-shaped orb and crystal that, together, opened a portal to the Overworld, a magical land of square structures, creatures, and people where Steve had the power to craft anything he could envision. This was glorious until he accidentally opened another portal to the Nether, a hellscape ruled by Malgosha (Rachel House), the queen of the swine-y piglins, who hates creativity and imprisoned Steve, albeit not before he had his trusty pet wolf Dennis hide the orb and crystal under his waterbed back on Earth.

A Minecraft Movie throws exposition around willy-nilly, and it soon turns its gaze to Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Momoa), a former arcade champion now struggling to make ends meet in Idaho with his retro-gaming store. In reflective sunglasses, a pink fringe jacket, ripped jeans, a tank top, and gloves that leave his painted fingernails exposed, Garrett is a hair metal ‘80s throwback whose badass flamboyance is matched by his egomania.

Momoa has some fun strutting his stuff as a Double Dragon-looking stud, but the film’s script (penned by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta) gives him few choice one-liners, and the amusing ones are undercut by the material’s refusal to even momentarily catch its breath.

Through unimportant convolutions, Garrett befriends Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a middle-schooler who, in the aftermath of his mom’s passing, has just moved to town with his older sister and guardian Natalie (Emma Myers), who works at the local potato chip factory.

Henry is a genius inventor whose intelligence and gizmos earn him the ire of his bullying peers. Following a jetpack mishap, Henry and Garrett—the latter of whom has acquired the orb and crystal through an auction for the storage unit where Steve’s stuff was being kept—open a gateway to the Overworld and are sucked in along with Natalie and the siblings’ realtor/amateur zoologist Dawn (Danielle Brooks). There, they’re stunned by the realm’s bevy of cute animals and scary beasts, including zombies and fire arrow-shooting skeletons who emerge at night to attack.

This is all game accurate, as is A Minecraft Movie’s general visual design, but it still comes across as lackluster, akin to a slightly more cubist version of Super Mario Bros.’ mushroom kingdom. Facing certain death at the hands of enemies, the quartet is rescued by Steve, who explains that they must retrieve the orb (which they’ve lost) so he can use it as leverage to defeat Malgosha.

Alas, there’s little lucid internal logic to the proceedings, which zigzag about as if hopped up on Ritalin, sending its protagonists from one typical Minecraft locale to another, be it a village where Steve introduces the gang to his hot lava-heated chicken (cue one of the film’s typical Jack Black ditties) or a mineshaft where they’re hunted by a monstrous Great Hog and escape by detonating a swarm of creepers.

During their hyper-speed journey, Garrett and Steve squabble while vying for macho supremacy, and the two have a natural and endearing devil horns-waving rock ‘n’ roll rapport that peaks during a closing musical number.

Unfortunately, the film doesn’t adequately establish either their initial contentiousness or their later rapprochement; like everything else in A Minecraft Movie, they’re just chaotically bouncing this way and that. That said, they’re treated better than Myers and Brooks, who are sent off on their own for a spell and are largely employed as afterthought third-act devices. Henry is front and center throughout and yet of zero importance or interest, no matter that the material tries to make something out of his and Garrett’s unlikely friendship.

The early sight of Momoa crooning along to Skid Row’s “I’ll Remember You” and then throwing a temper tantrum when his Pontiac Firebird goes kaput italicizes A Minecraft Movie’s wish to straddle the demographics divide, providing gaming-centric shout-outs to kids and old-school gags for the parents unlucky enough to chaperon them to the theater.

Such a tried-and-true strategy, however, is sabotaged by a breakneck tempo that doesn’t allow anything to solidify. Before a novel character or gaming element can be processed, Hess is sprinting onwards as if fearful that staying put for more than a second at a time will lead to audience boredom. Not helping matters is the fact that the Overworld’s denizens barely speak and, save for a piglin army commander, have no personality.

So sloppy is A Minecraft Movie that it can’t keep track of its various concerns, highlighted by a mirthless subplot—in which Jennifer Coolidge’s vice principal picks up and woos an Overworld resident who’s traveled to our universe—that it basically drops around the midway point.

Buried deep within Hess’ wannabe blockbuster is a message about how creativity is cool and, thus, so too are outcasts. Yet nothing about this hodgepodge fits together. Minecraft enthusiasts will be pleased by the film’s various nods to its multiplatform predecessor. Nonetheless, shouting out isn’t the same thing as faithfully celebrating and translating, and those with no experience assembling towers, villages, and weapons in Mojang Studios’ sandbox will undoubtedly find it all scattershot and wearisome. It’s proof that you can build it, but that doesn’t mean anyone—much less newbies—will come.