A Minecraft Movie (2025)
Rating: 5 of 10 Stars
A Movie... With Minecraft
It's not easy adapting a video game into a film especially one like Minecraft, which famously lacks a predefined story or characters beyond the player's imagination. And yet, here we are with A Minecraft Movie, a live-action/CGI hybrid directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) and headlined by Jason Momoa and Jack Black.
The premise is simple and suitably chaotic: a group of four misfit teens, including Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen, are mysteriously transported into the pixelated Overworld of Minecraft, where they must team up with a grizzled old Steve (Jack Black) to find a way home and save the world from a piglin warlord. It's the kind of story that tries to stitch together nostalgic gameplay references with coming-of-age beats and big, effects-heavy set pieces.
Jack Black, unsurprisingly, is the film's standout. His performance as a weary, ex-doorknob-salesman version of Steve somehow works, quirky and oddly heartfelt. It's the kind of role Black can ground with humor and pathos even when the film around him wobbles.
Unfortunately, the rest of the cast struggles to find footing. Despite being made up of generally likable and talented actors, their characters are flat and their arcs barely register. This feels less like a performance issue and more like a script that didn't give them much to work with. The writing, while peppered with clever nods to in-game mechanics, is mostly thin and scattershot.
To be fair, maybe this was always going to be a tough assignment. Minecraft has no inherent plot, so any film adaptation was bound to feel either too far removed or too contrived. Hess and the team lean heavily into silliness, and while some audiences (particularly younger viewers and die-hard fans) might enjoy the ride, it never quite lands emotionally or tonally.
The visuals are energetic, if a bit overwhelming, and there are fun cameos from YouTubers and Minecraft royalty that fans will appreciate. But beneath the fan service and kinetic energy, the film lacks narrative cohesion.
In the end, A Minecraft Movie is a strange mix of creative ambition and structural mess. It's not without its moments, mostly thanks to Black, but it's hard to shake the feeling that the film never really figured out what it wanted to be. I'm not even sure what I wanted from it, but I know I didn't find it here.
I'm Rae Serbeck, I Watch and Review all Movies Large and Small!
