“It can’t be as bad as everyone is saying it will be,” I thought.
For some reason, I kept telling myself this. I thought that there had to be some redeemable features in “A Minecraft Movie.” Surely, it wasn’t the corporate shill garbage that everyone said it was going to be.
I scrambled to see which of my friends were available to see the film with me, because, what, was I supposed to see the Minecraft movie alone? Luckily, my friend Lexi was willing and available to subject herself to the hour and 40 minutes of torture with me.
The movie was at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday, so there were only two children in the theatre. The rest of the sold-out seats were filled with teenagers and adults. We saw some middle schoolers dressed in suits, ties and sunglasses on our way in.
So Lexi and I reclined in our seats and started crunching our popcorn, waiting for the film to start. When the first line of the movie was spoken, however, I knew that everyone was right. This movie was going to be as bad as people said it was.
“As a child, I yearned for the mines,” is the very first line of the movie.
Oh, boy. The curtain had just opened, and already they referenced a meme from two years ago. I looked at Lexi and asked her what I had dragged us into.
A whole lot of nothing happens for a bit in the real world before a series of wacky hijinks lands our cast into the world of Minecraft. The main characters struggle to fight monsters before being rescued by Jack Black, who introduces himself.
The theater burst into raucous applause, and I realized that while the movie I was about to see was going to be awful, the experience of watching it didn’t have to be.
People sang along during the song “Steve’s Lava Chicken.” I felt like I wasn’t in on the joke but was also extremely impressed that so many people knew a song from a movie that was only a week old.
Oh, yeah, there are songs in this movie. I don’t remember the exact number, maybe four or five, but they’re all only around a minute long and almost exclusively feature Jack Black singing. It’s a poor attempt at recapturing the lightning-in-a-bottle from his performance of “Peaches” as Bowser from “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
On that, let’s talk about the actors. The acting actually upset me because, for the most part, it was good. I always felt like the actors on screen were doing exactly what the director wanted them to.
The highlight of the film is Jason Momoa as Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a washed-up gamer who thinks he’s tough stuff but is actually a total loser. Maybe I liked him because I saw myself in him. Deep, huh?
Momoa is clearly having the time of his life every time he’s on screen. “A Minecraft Movie” made me want to see more titles where he plays a comic-relief character instead of a musclehead.
I would love a buddy cop movie where one cop was goofy and one was serious, but both are played by Jason Momoa.
Honestly, what else is there to say about this movie? The directing achieved what it wanted to achieve and the acting was good, but the writing and scenario are such absolute drivel that I doubt kids would find much of it entertaining.
There is a character named General Chungus. That’s it. That’s the entire joke with the character. There were so many jokes in the movie where my reaction was, “what?” instead of actually laughing at them.
On the other hand, the b-plot with Jennifer Coolidge was genuinely funny, and there was so much applause in the theatre after “Chicken Jockey” that they should’ve paused the movie for applause.
As a movie, I give ‘A Minecraft Movie’ a 1/5. There’s barely anything worth salvaging in this dumpster fire of a film.
But as an experience, I give it a 10/5. I haven’t had that much fun in a movie theatre in my life. Lexi and I still look at each other and just burst into laughter like we’re keeping some secret we can’t share with the rest of the world. Our friendship will never be the same.
Tolbert can be reached at tolbernj7262@uwec.edu. Help him mine, then craft.
