‘A Minecraft Movie’ Brings Its Block-Shaped World To Life With Colorful Humans and a Colorless Story

Alci Rengifo

All that is greenlit must first be I.P. per current studio dictum, so now we get “A Minecraft Movie.” As the title announces, this is the movie adaptation of the 2011 sandbox “Minecraft” game, originally created by the Swedish developer Mojang Studios before Microsoft scooped it up in 2014 for $2.5 billion. Now more money has been pumped into a feature film where ironically enough, the humans prove to be much more entertaining than the video game figures. You walk out of the movie wondering if there was ever a way to even adapt this material into a convincing cinematic narrative, but convinced Jack Black and Jason Momoa should do their own buddy comedy.

As with many video games, the challenge is in finding a plot for something that is inherently interactive. Directed Jared Hess and the army of screenwriters credited settle on Steve (Black), a dreamer not made for this world of work schedules and other hassles, who ends up in a mine where he finds a glowing blue cube. The cube transports Steve into the Overworld, a magical land where your imagination can build whatever you want in this block-based terrain. He even becomes friends with a wolf-dog, Dennis. Ah, but there is also a Netherworld ruled by barbarian piglets led by warlord Malgosha (Rachel House), who covets the blue cube. To save everyone, Steve sends Dennis into our world with the cube to hide it. It ends up in a storage vault where it falls into the hands of Garrett (Momoa), a ‘80s refugee who owns a failing game and toys shop. Into town move orphaned siblings Natalie (Emma Myers), just hired to run social media for a potato chip factory, and her teen brother Henry (Sebastian Hansen). When they cross paths with Garrett, they all get sucked into the Overworld.

It has been said that nearly every story might have been told already, a sentiment that gains credence with a movie like this. Video game adaptations tend to rely on this premise of portals connecting the game’s world with ours. There’s some more color and slapstick energy to “A Minecraft Movie” thanks to Hess, who is best known for oddball entertainments like “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre.” He loves screw-ups and outsiders, to a level where the CGI landscapes feel intrusive. There’s the small town awkwardness of “Napoleon Dynamite” when Henry tries to fit in at school by showing off his nerdy credentials, making a rocket contraption that threatens to get Natalie fired. Jason Momoa is an all-American macho loser, dressed and speaking like hair metal never ended. He has some of the goofy energy of “Nacho Libre,” Hess’ surreal celebration of Mexican wrestling culture starring Black as an aspiring fighter who lives by day as a monk.

Black is the other entertaining component, adding his manic persona to a world of mushroom homes or chicken cooked via lava. He mocks his Tenacious D frontman side gig a little by singing songs everyone agrees are ridiculously bad. His and Momoa’s punchlines, which get better as the two become dueling alphas on their way to being total bros, help us through the rest of the so-called plot. If you’ve never played “Minecraft” you might get even more lost as to what any of this is about. Comfort yourself with the notion that the Overworld just exists. Why is it in blocks, including the screeching sheep and even pacifist Villagers? Not for us to know. Only gaze at the digital backdrops, Frankenstein-like Zombies who growl and emerge out of the blocky woods, or Iron Golems that lump around town. The piglets meanwhile inhabit another villainous space of molten backgrounds and rocky walls. Malgosha seeks cosmic domination like a cruel CEO bent on destroying creativity. She’s overshadowed by Jennifer Coolidge as Henry’s Vice Principal Marlene, a horny single who takes a wandering Villager who slipped through the portal into the real world out to dinner.

The fun of “Minecraft” as a game is the ability of the player to get truly creative and be a part of the environment. In a way the movie gets around that by making the humans so colorful. Henry does demonstrate the power of imagination by conjuring fun gadgets and weapons to take on the warring piglets. Very young viewers who don’t care about logical fallacies might have the most fun, though the third acts starts dragging out of the simple fact that there isn’t much more to the premise. As “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” proved, sometimes the best approach for these video game movies can be animation, where there is absolute freedom to do anything without the constraints of real world actors. Here, the actors feel constrained by the evil piglets, needing to get CGI metal wings to fly through CGI clouds and wield CGI crystalline swords. Black and Momoa nearly get us through it with their goofy chemistry. They bring some life to a movie that is otherwise nothing but digital building blocks.

“A Minecraft Movie” releases April 4 in theaters nationwide.