A Minecraft movie

There is something strangely poetic and dangerously precarious about attempting to transform the most open game in digital history into the most linear form of entertainment: a movie. A Minecraft Movie, directed by Jared Hess, not only rises to the challenge, it subverts expectations with a mischievous smile and a firm handshake, delivering a product that is as erratic as it is sincere. It may not be the groundbreaking, heartwarming family adventure that The LEGO Movie or Barbie managed to be, but it's also not a soulless, lifeless commercial product. Instead, A Minecraft Movie sits somewhere in between, a motley mix of nostalgia, juvenile chaos, and eccentric sincerity that could well enchant the right audience, provided they have a very high tolerance for slapstick gags and hyperactivity.

At the heart of the film is Steve, played with his usual energy and bulging eyes by Jack Black, who fits perfectly into this pixelated universe. As someone who still remembers sneaking into an early morning screening of School of Rock as a teenager just to hear Black rant about AC/DC in front of a class of kids, seeing him lead this story is both comforting and surreal. Steve isn't just a guy in a voxel world, he's a door handle salesman turned dreamer who is literally digging his way to a new reality. The Overworld is his escape from mediocrity, and Dennis, his wolf companion (cubic, of course), is his only friend until everything falls apart with the arrival of the evil piglin witch Malgosha, voiced with delightful malice by Rachel House. It is here, where creation is threatened by destruction, that A Minecraft Movie misses its first philosophical pitch: the war between creativity and consumption.

The real protagonist of the film, however, is young Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a brilliant child, overwhelmed by grief and misunderstood. It's a well-worn archetype, to be sure—think The Last Starfighter or Flight of the Navigator—but one that still works when the character is written with a hint of emotional resonance. Unfortunately, Hansen's Henry is more of a concept than a character, a pawn in a script written by a small army of screenwriters. His narrative arc feels contrived rather than earned, and while there's an obvious intention to draw parallels between Minecraft's freedom of expression and his stifled creativity, the execution is uneven, bogged down by plot detours and throwaway gags. That said, his scenes with Garrett The Garbage Man Garrison, played by Jason Momoa, a fallen arcade legend with Skid Row on his car radio and a closet full of broken dreams, offer some of the film's few genuine moments of mentorship and emotion. Jason Momoa embodies Garrett as a mix of hair metal vanity and playground-style paternal humor, and while it often borders on parody, it's this wacky, atypical charisma that keeps you watching.

And yet, A Minecraft Movie doesn't draw its strength from its plot or its quest to save the world, but from its textures, both literal and figurative. Director Jared Hess, known for his quirky comedies such as Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, returns to his penchant for small-town America, llama cameos, and small-town eccentricities, by setting much of the action in Chuglass, a fictional town in Idaho whose main attractions are a potato chip factory and a high school vice principal played by Jennifer Coolidge, who dispenses totally inappropriate life advice to children. These scenes echo the offbeat charm of Jared Hess's previous work, reminding viewers that there is a world beyond portals and Piglins, a world filled with broken dreams, beat-up cars, and social media jobs that barely pay the rent. Jennifer Coolidge's scenes with a mute Minecraft villager transported into reality are bizarre, pointless, and yet wonderful, reminding us that absurdity can be sincere when it doesn't try too hard to be.

When we finally arrive in the Overworld, the visual design, while not quite achieving the 8-bit aesthetic of the original game, is effective in its acid-colored chaos. The production goes all out on spectacle with blocky wild animals, fireball-throwing squids, and, yes, a zombie riding a chicken that made the kids in my theater scream with joy. It's all very loud, very fast, and very referential. But there's a disconnect between what the game represents and what the movie delivers. Minecraft is slow, meditative, even haunting in its solitude. It's about personal creativity, the joy of building for the sake of building, and the quiet satisfaction of turning nothing into something. The film, on the other hand, rushes through these moments, reducing creation to a tool for comic gags and narrative shortcuts. We get a song about lava-roasted chicken instead of seeing Steve actually teach Henry how to build something meaningful.

Still, we'd be lying if we said we didn't laugh. Jack Black, in Tenacious D mode, performs four songs, each more absurd than the last. One of them, about a recipe for flame-grilled chicken, is a worthy successor to his song Peaches in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. While it won't win any awards, it will remain etched in your memory like a silver fish in your basement. There's also a clever (albeit underutilized) tribute to the late YouTuber Technoblade, a subtle but touching homage that resonated much more deeply than the film probably intended. As someone who never understood the cult following around Minecraft streamers but has seen their influence firsthand through my nephews who talk about Dream and Tubbo with the reverence reserved for religious prophets, this inclusion was important. It grounded the film, if only briefly, in an emotional connection to the real world.

But in the end, A Minecraft Movie feels like it went through too many creative stages. The fingerprints of the six credited writers are all over the disjointed narrative, and as the film shifts from sincere to hysterical to boring, the real enemy isn't Malgosha, but the lack of tonal cohesion. The themes of grief, reinvention, and imagination, while present, are so diluted by obligatory action scenes and dialogue filled with clichés that they go almost unnoticed. It's a film that wants to be everything to everyone, and in doing so, it loses the simplicity that made the game and stories like The Iron Giant and The Lego Movie so successful. It's a missed opportunity, even if it is colorful and sometimes hilarious.

There is, however, a strange comfort in the way A Minecraft Movie embraces its contradictions. In many ways, it's a film that understands it can never truly replicate what makes the game great. So instead, it erects a monument to absurdity, fills it with potato croquettes and lava chickens, and invites us to watch Jack Black punch a zombie in the face. There's something admirable about this approach, even if the end result never quite reaches the heights it was aiming for. Perhaps the best way to appreciate it is the same way we appreciate our first Minecraft house: it's not pretty, it's barely functional, but it was built with heart, and sometimes that's enough. A must-see in a good theater.

A Minecraft Movie
Directed by Jared Hess
Written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, Chris Galletta
Story by Allison Schroeder, Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer
Based on Minecraft by Mojang Studios
Produced by Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Roy Lee, Jon Berg, Jason Momoa, Jill Messick, Torfi Frans Olafsson, Vu Bui
Starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Jennifer Coolidge
Cinematography: Enrique Chediak
Edited by James Thomas
Music by Mark Mothersbaugh
Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, Mojang Studios, Vertigo Entertainment, On the Roam
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates: March 30, 2025 (Empire Leicester Square), April 2, 2025 (France), April 4, 2025 (United States)
Running time: 101 minutes

Seen on April 21, 2025 at Gaumont Disney Village, Theater 4, seat A18