A Minecraft Movie: Lovable Stupidity

Regarding movies, rarely have I seen such a wholesale turnaround of public opinion as I did with Jared Hess's A Minecraft Movie. The reaction to its first trailer was one of the most overwhelming floods of online negativity I have ever seen, and I don't really blame YouTube's audience for their reaction to a trailer that horrendously managed expectations. Fast-forward to April, and everyone is yelling Chicken Jockey as if the teaser trailer for this movie never happened. I understand that I'm late to the party as far as this review goes, but remember, I treat my review blog just as much as a journal of what I watch as anything else, so bear with me here. So, is A Minecraft Movie any good? What, do you mean like in the traditional sense? I'm a few hours out of finishing the movie as I write this, and still a little unsure how I feel about it. To clue the three of you who haven't seen it in on what it's about, a mysterious portal sucks Garrett Garrison, an old-school video game champion, Henry and Natalie, two siblings recovering from the recent death of their mother, and Dawn, a real-estate agent, into a mysterious and blocky dimension where they'll have to work with a mysterious man named Steve to survive. It's not exactly a revolutionary premise, though I'd be lying if I said it wasn't par for the course when it comes to movies based on or adapting video games, which have been doing better in recent years than I was conditioned to expect growing up.

The characters of A Minecraft Movie - especially Steve and Garrett - are absurdly colorful and amusingly goofy. They're more or less non-stop fountains of incredibly dumb humor, but I'd be lying if I said this movie wasn't self-aware. It takes all the stupid jokes its characters make and wears them like a badge of honor. How can I not like a movie that owns the things it cares about, even just a little? The visual style of this movie is likewise a lot of fun. The animation of this movie's Minecraft world is similar enough to the game's art to be nostalgic, yet distant enough to remain fresh. I imagine that longtime fans of the game, who surely saw this movie long before I did, were pleased. Personally, I was impressed by its ability to make the familiar look innovative yet recognizable at the same time.

Is this movie self-indulgent? You bet. A Minecraft Movie loves what it does, no matter how dumb much of it may be, and it takes all the time in the world to do it. I won't go so far as to say that the story isn't there, but let's be polite and call the plot loose. Still, it remains loads of fun, even if I can't say with a straight face that the story accomplishes much. There aren't really any big reveals, changes of pace, or major obstacles to speak of, and the bread and butter of a good movie, or even a movie, is too often missing. As much as it references the game, worships its art style, and makes inside jokes that will probably become mainstream due to its popularity, A Minecraft Movie doesn't achieve much with what you could call its story. The critic and storyteller in me were left somewhat unsatisfied, even if my inner child was screaming with joy.

I don't know if or even how A Minecraft Movie can be graded on a traditional scale. I hated it and somehow loved it all at the same time, but I had no problem at all seeing why it became so popular despite the overwhelmingly adverse reactions to its first trailer. If nothing else, this movie serves as the cinematic comeback story to rule them all, and I think that's commendable, though it's not a very good movie in a traditional sense, falling prey to being pretty unfocused and one-dimensional for a story about multiple dimensions. Still, if you've read my review for Trap, you know that my 5/10 reviews can go either direction, as rare as that may be, and I'd encourage you to take this review as swinging into the positive more than it does the negative. At its best, A Minecraft Movie is some of the most fun I've had with a movie targeted to younger audiences in a while, and I think this is attributable to the fact that it lets itself be stupid sometimes, or all the time.

A Minecraft Movie - 5/10

Psalm 127:1-2