Movie Review: A MINECRAFT MOVIE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 4th, 2025 / 03:08 AM

A MINECRAFT MOVIE | ©2025 Warner Bros. / Legendary

Rating: PG
Stars: Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen, Kate McKinnon (voice)
Writers: Chris Bowman & Hubbel Palmer and Neil Widener & Gavin James and Chris Galletta, story by Allison Schroeder and Chris Bowman & Hubbel Palmer, based on the video game created by Markus “Notch” Persson
Director: Jared Hess
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: April 4, 2025

Per Wikipedia, MINECRAFT is the most popular video game in the world. Even if Wikipedia is wrong (it happens) about it being Number One, MINECRAFT is certainly right up there. It was therefore inevitable that a movie be made. Hence, A MINECRAFT MOVIE.

MINECRAFT the game had a soft launch in 2009, with the first official commercial version launched in 2011. While many modifications have been made, the basics are the same. There are a variety of player modes, including one with no combat: players can just use the games features to virtually craft whatever architecture or tools they want. Other modes entail fighting off monsters, individually and in mobs.

There is a distinctive look to MINECRAFT, in that almost everything – from people to animals to buildings to terrain – is square, rectangular or oblong, with edges. This is an amusing conceit, especially when applied to live-action characters and creatures, as it is in A MINECRAFT MOVIE.

Jack Black plays Steve, who narrates the opening, setting up how he, a visitor from our reality, wound up in the Overworld, Minecraft’s main realm. Steve loves the Overworld, constructing all sorts of buildings and equipment, and befriending a square wolf that he calls Dennis.

Steve and Dennis have a blissful existence until they wander into the Nether, a dark realm full of Piglins (kind of pig goblins), where creativity is forbidden. Steve is taken prisoner by the evil Piglin Queen Malgosha.

In our world, former video game champ Garrett Garrison (Jason Momoa), now down on his luck, gets hold of the device that allows travel between worlds. Garrett, science-minded teen Henry (Sebastian Hansen), Henry’s protective slightly older sister Natalie (Emma Myers), and real estate agent/petting zoo impresario Dawn (Danielle Brooks) wind up making the journey as well.

There are adventures, there is crafting, there are the foretold perils and predictable emotional turns, and a fair amount of explanation of what a player can do in MINECRAFT in the form of narrative exposition.

One agreeable retro aspect of A MINECRAFT MOVIE is that most of the MINECRAFT beings – at least, villagers and Piglins – are played by actors in costumes and full masks, rather than CGI. This may remind older viewers of live-action children’s TV of yore and saves us from all kinds of uncanny valley effects.

Black is fearless and shameless as Steve, with no top he won’t go over. Momoa follows Black’s trajectory, appearing to know that no matter how big his performance is, there’s someone right next to him giving an even bigger one.

Hansen is extremely authentic in the circumstances. Myers and Brooks are good, though given less to do, and Brooks is used for some screaming Black woman jokes.

Children in the A MINECRAFT MOVIE screening audience sounded like they were having a wonderful time. This may or may not also be true of grownup MINECRAFT fans (no post-screening poll was conducted by this reviewer).

For adults who are not into MINECRAFT, the production design by Grant Major is legitimately captivating. The script and story are pretty much what we’d expect. The humor and suspense seem to be pitched at pre-teens, though there is at least one good throwaway line, and a subplot involving Jennifer Coolidge as a high school vice-principal does get a good mid-end credits scene.

There are a few meta-gripes that could be made, but mostly A MINECRAFT MOVIE appears to faithfully serve its target audience. That “A” in the title suggests there will be more to come.

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