Movie rating: 1/10
Theater experience: 10/10
Spoilers ahead for “A Minecraft Movie.”
It’s rare, as a 22-year-old college student, that I’m truly reminded of how little time we have on Earth. However, as I sat in the College Station Cinemark suffering through all 101 minutes of “A Minecraft Movie,” that was at the forefront of my mind.
Let me put it another way: This is not a movie to watch sober. Please, for my sake, indulge in your substance of choice before submitting yourself to an hour and a half of grotesque hyperrealism animation and unfunny jokes. Oh, how I wish I had pregamed. It would have made the completely unnecessary Jason Momoa and Jack Black 69 scene almost funny.
But, hey, everything’s got a silver lining, right? Let’s start with the things “A Minecraft Movie” did right.
I have no idea who the target audience is, but this movie had something for the two main archetypes of Minecraft players. For the nerdy boys who come home from school and hop on a world with their buddies, there’s Henry. For the Discord mods, there’s Steve.
Hear me out — overweight, weird fringing-on-neckbeard facial hair and canonically smells bad? Sound familiar?
The movie’s style of comedy — well, comedy is a strong word — was to throw every plausible kind of joke at the audience and hope something sticks. While this was exhausting to watch, there was a little bit of humor for everyone; I cringed at some parts and laughed out loud at others, and I think most people had the same experience.
And … that’s about it. The only other good part of this movie was Jack Black’s eyebrows.
Unfortunately, this is a movie made for Generation Alpha by Generation X, so most of the comedy consisted of saying the words “thingy” and “bro” an inordinate amount of times. Oh, and it also unironically used the word “unalive.” I nearly walked out of the theater.
The storyline was a cheap Jumanji knockoff and the characters were woefully underdeveloped, even for my tempered expectations. It has the pacing of a TikTok short — too fast in all accounts, but halting awkwardly to have some sort of half-assed “grown-up” conversation between a pair of characters.
I’m confident Natalie and Dawn’s little convo while killing the zombie was only there to satisfy the Bechdel test. Speaking of which, why were their characters even in the movie? They were sidelined for 80% of it and did absolutely nothing in the long run. I’m sure it was supposed to be some sort of “girl power” thing for the sisters that got dragged along to the theater, but, like everything else in this movie, it fell flat.
The good female characters in this movie were Goosh — or whatever the evil lady’s name was — and Jennifer Coolidge’s role. Her romantic subplot with the villager was one of my favorite parts of the film.
The storyline proves the writers have no respect for their audience. Spelling out every joke — who needs nuance? — and don’t get me started on the big suspense scene when Henry is trying to reach the cube on the top of the tower.
You’re telling me this kid has been building houses and defenses lickety-split for hours, but it somehow takes him four business days to build a 3-block-tall staircase? You really couldn’t do any better than that? Make him run out of blocks, at least, or have the orb be guarded by obsidian he has to mine.
I already know what you’re going to say: “It’s a kids’ movie, stop taking it so seriously.”
When are we going to stop pretending like kids’ movies can’t be good films? Remember “Lego Batman?” Remember “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial?” What happened to treating kids like they have some base level of intelligence instead of feeding them slop like this?
Unfortunately, we’ll likely be seeing a sequel in the coming years, though for the life of me I don’t know what it could be about. The fact that Steve had elytra means he’s already been to the End, killed the Ender Dragon and gone to the End cities and ships that spawn through the gateway, so the sequel can’t be about that.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. The plot is irrelevant anyway, and even if they did have a throughline, it would probably be as disappointing a story as this one.
The thing that made this movie bearable — and, dare I say, funny — was the audience. The theater erupted at every one of Jack Black’s iconic lines. “I am Steve?” Applause. “Flint and steel?” Cheers. “Chicken jockey?” Clapping, some whoops. I think he may have even gotten a couple of standing ovations after the “Steve’s Lava Chicken” song.
I’m disappointed that I wasted 101 minutes of my life listening to Jack Black say things that way. Shoutout to the full row of guys wearing suits in front of my group. Without you, this film would have been intolerable.
Charis Adkins is an English senior and opinion editor for The Battalion.
