Okay, it’s time to get into A Minecraft Movie (2025), now streaming on Max. There’s a lot here to say and, unfortunately, not a lot of it is very good. In case you didn’t know, A Minecraft Movie is based on the video game Minecraft, a sort of blocky sandbox creation game that is popular with gamers of all ages, from kids aged four or five and up, to full on adults with jobs and existential dread and everything that comes with that. Starring Jack Black (one episode of Community, Be Kind Rewind), Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Dune), Danielle Brooks (Peacemaker), Emma Myers (Wednesday), and relative newcomer Sebastian Hansen, who plays her little brother. The characters have names, but they’re not really important, other than Steve, Jack Black’s character. The rest are just there to take up space on screen and for things to happen around them as the story, such that it is, unfolds.
Steve, if you know the game, should mean something to you, but at this point, I should mention that I’ve never played Minecraft and I have no plans to, nor any interest in it as a game. I should also admit to going into Minecraft hoping to dislike it. I can’t help it, I’m human, and I have biases and the best I can do is admit them to you. Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed; I’m not going to play hide the ball here, Minecraft is a bad movie. It’s really bad. But it serves its purpose.
As long as you view that purpose as distracting children for just about two hours by bombarding them with bright colors, memes even I understood (the children, they yearn for the mines), Jack Black randomly yelling every 90 seconds, doing his own Foley, and breaking out into song every 10 minutes, and other children on screen so they can relate. There’s almost a story here—mostly things just happen from one scene to another—but it’s about as important as the characters’ names, and Jack Black’s Steve will painfully explain everything to you like a five-year-old who has you cornered at a family gathering and is educating you on their newest obsession. Which is cute when it’s a kid telling you about dinosaurs, but when it’s a man in his mid-50s screaming at you about gorgonzola, it’s less endearing. To be fair, I appreciated some of the exposition, because I don’t know anything about Minecraft. That seems to be Steve’s biggest function in the movie, telling the characters and audience how everything works, which is practical, but I think it could have been masked a bit better so it didn’t feel so much like a game tutorial instead of a film. There’s nothing new or original in this movie—if you’ve seen the Jumanji reboots, you’ve already seen A Minecraft Movie, just done much better (not to mention that it also stars Jack Black in the role he was meant to play—a popular teenage girl). Kids get sucked into the magical world of Jumanji—oops, I mean the Minecraft Overworld—they complete a quest for the MacGuffin, and then they get to go home. Along the way, they learn some lessons about how it’s important to be who you are, and they take those lessons back to the real world.
That’s not a knock—that’s the point of children’s adventure movies and I suppose A Minecraft Movie serves that purpose (as long as you can ignore that Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks basically just exist to do reaction videos about what’s going on in the Overworld; they don’t have a whole lot here to work with, which is disappointing because I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Emma Myers and her possible casting in the MCU and I hoped there’d be a little more meat to her role, but I suppose that was misplaced), but execution matters and Minecraft manages to just stumble over the low bar we set for children’s entertainment and I suppose that’s okay if that’s all you’re looking for out of a kids’ movie. To be fair, I got a few chuckles here and there—especially in the scenes between minutes 5 and 26 where Jack Black wasn’t in it—and it’s pretty much the best way to use Jason Momoa. He’s really leaning into his big, imposing silly guy period, with that real John Cena feel to it. And it works. He drops some one-liners that get the job done—I laughed when he says to Emma Myers that he’s been more of a sister to her brother than she has, all while wearing a fringed pink leather jacket with aplomb. And it actually delivered one of the scant few genuine moments in the film. He slays the look and the juxtaposition from his intimidating physical appearance to his childish behavior pretty much works. In fact, even with Jack Black’s in-your-face performance (even by Jack Black standards), it’s Jason Momoa who is the standout in this movie and steals the show rather thoroughly.
Of course, analyzing this movie as a grown adult who doesn’t play the game and doesn’t have children to distract, it makes me wonder some things about why we set the bar so low for kids’ stuff. Because it doesn’t have to be this way—a cross between an Illumination animated movie and CoComelon with about as much nutritional value as the tub your popcorn comes in—it can be better. I don’t think this movie’s biggest failure is its inability to entertain me because I fully expected that. I’m not the target audience and it’s okay that not every movie is made specifically for me. I think the biggest failure is that it failed at conveying the appeal of Minecraft in the first place. I spoke with a group of Minecraft players, all adults, some with children and some without, asking them what appealed to them about the game, because I just don’t get it and that’s, again, also okay. But the overwhelming response that I got was that Minecraft is fun for them because it allows them to do just about whatever they want. The word “freedom” came up in almost every response, creativity was another buzzword, relaxation was another thing they mentioned, because you can play Minecraft in a way where you don’t face enemies and don’t seem to have missions to accomplish. It’s a big virtual sandbox where you can play with Legos without playing with Legos (and as a huge Lego nerd myself, I can appreciate that) and leave a confining world behind in the endless Overworld of Minecraft where the limits don’t apply. And none of this comes across in the movie. There is no feeling of freedom, there is no sense of relaxation or creativity; framing this story as an accidental quest to return home doesn’t give you any time to live in the Overworld or experience it the way a kid or any Minecraft player would. Sure, there are a few scenes where characters point at the ground and blocks appear, but when something actually interesting is built, it’s done offscreen and only you see the results. No one ever gets to indulge in the freedom the game gives its players. Instead, the narrative structure puts a ticking clock and a sense of urgency on the film, which are things Minecraft the game doesn’t have. Of course there has to be an impetus for the plot, but it doesn’t give the audience any time to appreciate the Overworld because everyone’s running for their lives all the time (even though it never really seems like anyone is in danger). And I really think that’s the biggest issue with the film and why it feels like a failure of a narrative to me. The Super Mario Bros. Movie may not have been good, in many ways the same sort of complaints I’ve lodged here could be lodged at that movie, but at least it felt mostly like Mario. This was just Jumanji with a DLC skin on it that felt like the Canal Street version that you’d buy off a folding table on the sidewalk next to a $20 “Louis Vuitton” handbag.
You can use A Minecraft Movie to occupy your kids, but you don’t have to give them something with so little redeeming value. It’s the empty calories of kids’ movies and studios have proven that they can do better than aiming to just graze that low bar we’ve set for children’s entertainment. There are better options out there and we don’t have to lower our standards for storytelling just because it’s aimed at a younger audience. Bluey has proven that, Hilda has proven that, and for many years now, Pixar and Dreamworks have been proving it as well.
How to Train Your Dragon, for example, is a better way to spend your time with or without your kids. With the hollow-feeling live action remake in theaters now, it’s the perfect time to go back and watch the original animated trilogy and even watch the Dragons: Race to the Edge series on Netflix to supplement it. Smarter, better storytelling in a fantastical adventure setting that really sells the beauty of the world in which the characters live, it’s a great series. The aforementioned Jumanji films do everything Minecraft does better, and the original Robin Williams classic is also out there to watch and is much, much better than A Minecraft Movie (if a bit darker when you’re paying attention). And let’s not forget Pixar in this conversation, the studio that revolutionized children’s entertainment and continues to deliver time and time again. One film of theirs that I want to highlight here is another movie about a kid who experiences a magical and foreign world to him, but with a twist—overshadowed by the excellent Encanto, Luca tells the story of a sea monster who ventures to the surface world and goes on a beautiful, heartwarming adventure. If you spent 2021 not talking about Bruno, it was easy to miss Luca, but it is well worth your time to go back and watch it because it’s really a great movie for kids and adults alike. Even Disney returned Star Wars to its kid-friendly roots with the excellent Skeleton Crew, which draws heavy inspiration from classic kids’ adventure movies from the 1980s. And of course, I can’t talk about kid-friendly movies that make an adult’s heart melt without mentioning Paddington, movies that were so good I can still hardly believe it. I’ve had it in my head to do a big compare and contrast between the character of Paddington and the MCU portrayal of Captain America and how they both embody the ideals of a society without the rather horrifying trappings of the past (and now that the Paddington trilogy is complete, it might be time to revisit that idea). Children’s entertainment doesn’t have to be mindless, it doesn’t have to yell “Sneak attack!” every twenty minutes (when only one was actually a sneak attack, though yelling that seems to defeat the purpose), it doesn’t have to references meme after meme, it doesn’t have to leave you walking away from it feeling like you should have just been folding your laundry in silence instead. It can be wonderful, it can be beautiful, it can tell meaningful stories that don’t talk down to kids, but that teach them something while entertaining them.
So yes, while Minecraft may offer more laughs than the entire series of the truly dismal and unfunny Night Court reboot, you can do much better with your and your kids’ screen time than this. I can’t tell you whether to skip it or not, because you might enjoy it, you might appreciate the references, you might like being bathed in the nostalgia of a game you played or still play; but, if you haven’t seen the movies or shows I mentioned, I urge you to give them a try as well. Because they’re really worth the time.
