When 1989’s Gamer of the Year, Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (played by Jason Momoa), faces eviction for his fledgling video game arcade, he desperately bids on a storage unit believing there’s a rare Atari Cosmos in it. After winning the bidding with $900 he doesn’t have, he finds out it’s just an empty Atari box with no unit inside, adding insult to injury. Among other random worthless items, a glowing cube falls out of said box and it looks cool enough to sell in his store. Around the same time, siblings Natalie (Emma Myers) and Henry (Sebastian Hansen) move to town after their recently departed mom leaves them with a house. On his way to school, Henry rides by Garrett’s store and finds the cube, opening a portal. The entire cast of characters gets pulled in and they find themselves in the Overworld for the first time. They eventually meet Steve (Jack Black) who is on a quest from his captor, Malgosha (Rachel House), to retrieve the cube.
Black and Momoa play their characters the only way they can in order to make this movie enjoyable: campy. Black clearly turns his delivery up to 11 and Momoa plays the stereotypical cool has-been with the right amount of obnoxiousness. If either actor takes the project seriously at all, A MINECRAFT MOVIE is a legendary failure. So, whether Black was making fun of the movie by portraying the character the way he did, it doesn’t matter. It works. And it’s the only it would’ve worked.
The CGI is actually pretty good as well. There were serious concerns after the first trailer dropped about the quality (or lack thereof) of the movie but those were all put to bed pretty quickly in the final product on the silver screen.
The main issues with A MINECRAFT MOVIE are the admirable attempts to get the general audience ready for what they’re about to see without making it a four-hour epic. The first 15 minutes seem to be nothing but Black reading from a script. It’s exposition overload but here’s the thing: I’m not sure there was a better way to bring people unfamiliar with the video game franchise up to speed.
In addition, it’s possible the filming of this movie could’ve been done over a period of nine days. There are so many single-shots for reactions and lines of dialogue where other characters — who were in the immediate vicinity, by the way — were obviously missing. It’s almost as if the directors had a tight two-week window to get all they needed. Or, there were a ton of re-shoots and all the performers couldn’t be there at the same time so they just did what they could.
In other words, A MINECRAFT MOVIE felt like a student-made movie with a rich set of parents underwriting an insane CGI budget.
As much as I try my hardest to leave expectations at the theater door, I’m willing to admit that my score very well could reflect my expectations-turned-upside-down. A MINECRAFT MOVIE is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination but, after the first trailer, I expected it to be complete and utter garbage. Instead, I found it to be pretty entertaining thanks largely to Black and Momoa turned up the camp.
JKG SCORE: 6.0
Untitled Film Project 