A MINECRAFT MOVIE: 3 ½ STARS. “colored with creativity and exuberant performances.”
SYNOPSIS: In “A Minecraft Movie,” a new fantasy-comedy based on the 2011 video game “Minecraft,” and now playing in theatres, four misfits are sucked through a portal into the Overworld, a strange, cubic wonderland where imagination is king. “In the Overworld anything you can dream about, you can create!” To escape, they team with Steve, an expert crafter who will help them reconnect with their imaginations and get back to the real world.
CAST: Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, and Sebastian Hansen. Directed by Jared Hess.
REVIEW: The world of imagination that fuels the Overworld is very much present in “A Minecraft Movie.” It’s a standard action-adventure video game adaptation, colored with creativity and exuberant performances from Jason Momoa as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, Jack Black as Steve, a pioneer who treats the Overworld like his own personal sandbox, and Jennifer Coolidge as Marlene, an oversharing vice principal who says she stayed in a bad marriage for twenty years “for the dogs.”
All three let their freak flags fly. Especially Black, who seems a lock for Most Over-The-To Performance at this year’s Oscars. He plays Steve like a Tenacious D song come to life. Your enjoyment of the movie may be directly related to your tolerance for his antics, but I thought he was a hoot and perfectly understood the assignment.
The film’s conceit, borrowed from the game, allows for unfettered silliness, even if you’ve never played the game. Director Jared Hess, best known for 2004’s “Napoleon Dynamite,” brings his off-kilter sensibility to the material, creating an anything-goes universe populated by likeable oddballs.
It’s a deeply slaphappy movie that features a cube shaped orb, hot lava cooked chicken, and a real estate agent who runs a mobile zoo out of her car. It’s these little details that provide some solid laughs—for kids and adults alike—and keeps the fast-paced story humming along between the big action set pieces.
“A Minecraft Movie” wallows in its absurdity, but underneath the zany escapades are not so madcap messages about the importance of being true to oneself, and the importance of embracing imagination in the real world as well as the Overworld.
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