by Erin Free
Worth: $17.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jack Black, Jason Momoa, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Rachel House
Intro:
...uproariously good fun...
With the canny, entertaining likes of Super Mario Bros and Sonic The Hedgehog, and the popularity of TV’s The Last Of Us, the video game movie adaptation seems to be well and truly looking up, finally basking in the light after years spent in darkness thanks to shockers like Doom, Double Dragon and Street Fighter. Happily, the cinematic sun keeps shining with A Minecraft Movie, but this time the rays are so bright that you have to occasionally shield your eyes. This is loopy, hectically paced stuff that literally overflows with energy, humour, colour and world-building, but surprise choice director Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite) never loses control and ultimately manages to effectively orchestrate the cinematic chaos that is A Minecraft Movie.
Based on the record-breaking, huge-selling phenomenon that is Mojang Studios’ video game Minecraft (in which you do everything from building cities to fighting off zombies), this imaginatively crafted big screen adaptation very quickly establishes the game’s “Overworld” as an alternate dimension into which a variety of characters gets sucked, beginning with Jack Black’s depressed office worker Steve. Trapped inside the game for many years, he is eventually joined – after some breakneck paced and rather random storytelling – by former video game champ Garrett “The Garbage Man” Marrison (Jason Momoa), teen loner Henry (Sebastian Hansen), his sensible sister Natalie (Emma Myers), and her sassy new friend Dawn (Danielle Brooks). With the evil Malgosha (Rachel House) poised to invade the Overworld, this unlikely team must fight together to save their bizarre new world.
The manner in which A Minecraft Movie relates to its video game progenitor is unfortunately for somebody else to discuss, but when judged merely on its own merits as a film, this is uproariously good fun. As well as peppering the film with jokes way too old for the film’s intended early-teen audience (Jennifer Coolidge is hilarious as a high school principal with, um, needs), director Jared Hess removes the reins completely from his vivacious leading men to highly comic and entertaining effect. Seemingly partly channelling Johnny Lawrence from Cobra Kai, the garishly costumed Momoa is an absolute hoot as the arrogant 1980s throwback video game champ, while Jack Black is so fired up he looks like he’s about to go on stage with his hard-rocking band Tenacious D. While the film is packed with set-pieces and cartoonish battle sequences, and is beautifully crafted at every turn, it’s through its goofy, absurdist humour that A Minecraft Movie really powers through, with its two wonderfully over-the-top leading men, Jason Momoa and Jack Black, throwing themselves into proceedings with near-alarming levels of bravado and self-deprecation. Who knows? Maybe audiences will have as much fun watching the film as its two stars obviously had making it…
