On April 3, cinemas began showing the adventure fantasy comedy «A Minecraft Movie» based on the mega-popular sandbox video game Minecraft, which was released in 2011. The trailers promised us a colorful, lighthearted blockbuster with a star-studded cast, designed for the whole family to go to the movies. In the review below, we tell you what the next screening of a virtual game.
Pluses:
For kids, it will be good entertainment; Jason Momoa and Jack Black are clearly having a blast here, and it’s working out well; bright digital setup;
Minuses:
adults have nothing to do at the screening (unless, of course, they tap into their inner child, which is absolutely nothing wrong with that); crass, silly humor that makes you feel sad rather than funny; except for Momoa and Black, the other characters don’t really show themselves;
«A Minecraft Movie»
Genre adventure comedy fantasy
Director Jared Hess
Starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Emma Myers, Daniel Brooks, Sebastian Eugene Hansen, Jennifer Coolidge, Kate McKinnon, Jemaine Clement
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
As a curious boy, Steve was always drawn to mines, but he never managed to enter the mysterious world of mining. As Steve grew up, he turned into a fat lumberjack who is bored in a boring office job, but his thirst for adventure has not disappeared. The man recalls his long-held dream of visiting a mine, so he picks up a pickaxe and starts working as a miner.
In the course of his mining activities, Steve accidentally stumbles upon two mysterious artifacts that, when interacted with, open a portal to the fantastic Overworld. Once there, the hero finally feels happy, because there, with the help of special cubic blocks, he can build literally anything he wants using his creative skills. But when the evil ruler of the Underworld, Nezer, encroaches on the artifacts, Steve decides to hide them in the real world.
One day, Garrett Garrison, once the best gamer of 1989 and now a financially impoverished loser, stumbles upon this miraculous version of Marvel’s Tesseract, nicknamed «The Garbage Man». He has just met a schoolboy named Henry, and together they reactivate the portal. At the same moment, they are joined by Henry’s older sister Natalie and her friend Dawn, and as a result, this good company is plunged into a strange and dangerous world of bizarre cubic shapes and boundless creativity.
The successful case of the resuscitated «Jumanji» and Jack Black, who, as a bonus, moved from there to the local adventure set — times. Positive perception by viewers and critics «Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves», even if the film failed catastrophically at the box office — two. It seems that the lighthearted adventures of unlikely companies consisting of diverse, charismatic characters who heroically overcome difficulties in exciting fantasy universes can still be interesting to viewers. This is regardless of whether filmmakers rely on virtual/desktop games or children’s picture books.
And how can we not mention the general rise of video game adaptations, which today would not be called an a priori failure, as it was once thought. It’s hard to think of a better time to bring game sets to the movie screen than now, when superhero blockbusters are endless, fantastic pirouettes by Dominic Toretto or a regular meeting Transformers have already bored everyone. In parallel with the release of «A Minecraft Movie» Netflix is releasing «Devil May Cry», and very soon we are expecting the big-screen adaptation of the survival horror «Until Dawn» and the second season of the hit show «The Last of Us» — on small screens.
As for the movie version of Minecraft, it will be hard to be sincerely enthusiastic about the proposed adventures if you are much older than, say, nine.
In terms of performance, it’s not so much «Jumanji» (minus Dwayne Johnson — plus Jason Momoa) that suggests a memory of some «Pixels» with Adam Sandler. As in the failed opus of 10 years ago, there is also enough nostalgic love for the arcade 80s, teamwork and pseudo-antagonism within the team, CGI blobs on the other side of the barricades (in this case, we are talking about the piglins). There is also crass, silly humor that makes you sad rather than funny.
In fact, in «A Minecraft Movie» there is very little thirst for the creativity that is so appreciated in the source material, and much more — a desire to make good money on a mega-popular brand (don’t forget to visit McDonald’s after the session and order Minecraft menu). No wonder the genre of the film implies joint family leisure, when dads and moms will definitely take their kids to the cinema to see a fresh adventure blockbuster, which, in turn, is designed to sell more tickets. And while the kids will be enthusiastically consuming unpretentious, colorful content, adults will surely be looking at their watches with hope.
In general, it is a futile and ungrateful task to pick on a movie and try to comprehend it from a serious film criticism point of view. How can an adult relate to a story in which Momoa, dressed in a pink fringed scarf, communicates with local sheep, crafts buckets (don’t ask) and engages in a no-holds-barred battle with a zombie baby who has ridden a hostile chicken. And so it is.
On the other hand, if the work of director Jared Hess, who confidently made a name for himself with his debut «Napoleon Dynamite» (2004), brings a smile to the faces of children, including Ukrainian ones, any film criticism will be inappropriate and powerless against this background.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that «A Minecraft Movie» — a silly children’s movie where «bacon frying» takes place, frankly, in a monotonous way, without any imagination, without any passion. Where you feel Spanish shame for Jennifer Coolidge’s storyline. Where Jack Black is too puffy for the conventional protagonist of the cubic world. And while children may be delighted with such a show, adults risk leaving the screening with a square head after such screen madness.
