Minecraft Movie — a surprising entertainer that doesn’t have one original bone in its body — is the kind of movie that makes you want to play the video game it is based on… if, that is, you haven’t played it yet, like this writer (I am more of a Star Craft II guy).

Given its popularity, since most of the world knows what Minecraft is — and a good chunk of the world’s population has already played it — the makers were extremely careful in adapting this story-less game into a movie. For the most part, they succeeded … by dumbing everything down; in this very rare case though, the over-simplicity works quite well.

A Minecraft Movie stands with the few game-turned-movies that work. It’s a tame, near-effortless jaunt about Steve (Jack Black), a doorknob-selling loser from a small town called Chuglass in Idaho that’s known for producing potato chips. Steve, who always wanted to be a miner since he was young, one day remembers his true calling for digging into the earth, where he cuts out a magical cube that takes him into the CG-animated realm called Overworld — a place of fantasy where everyone is cube-shaped, and one mines resources to create weapons, houses and other assorted items.

Despite the lush green, cube-shaped terrain with idiotic-looking cube-shaped animals, not everything is hunky-dory. At night, one has to create defenses to fight off zombies and skeletons, and during the day the towns are ravaged by “piglins” (cube-shaped anthropomorphic pigs) under the leadership of Malgosha (Rachel House), the piglin witch ruler from the hell-like place called the Nether, who wants to destroy fun, creativity and property.

A Minecraft Movie is fun, escapist entertainment that you’ll likely forget an hour or two after watching

Steve, who is a master builder (he is practiced enough to make anything), gets caught by Malgosha’s goons and sends his cube dog Dennis to his hometown on Earth with the Orb of Dominance and the Earth Crystal, two powerful items one needs to invade other realities.

Back in our reality, Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Mamoa), an ‘80s video game-champion-turned-loser, befriends Henry (Sebastian Hansen) — a teenager who is overly creative (he is asked to draw a banana and an orange in his still-life art class, and makes a banana with a rocket pack — so much for following the school curriculum).

Henry has just arrived in town with his elder sister Natalie (Emma Meyers), who has just started working at the potato chips factory. The siblings, with Garrett and Dawn (Danielle Brooks), their real-estate broker who also runs a travelling mini zoo, are plucked into the Overworld, where they first learn the basics of this world, and then go against Malgosha.

If any of this sounds like a hyper-active kiddie movie, well, it is exactly that — and that’s what makes it work. There aren’t a lot of brain cells at work here, and that’s okay. The film is fun, escapist entertainment that you’ll likely forget an hour or two after watching. The only thing that may stick with you is the crazy itch to play the game it is based on.

Released by HKC and Warner Bros, directed by Jared Hess and written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta, A Minecraft Movie is rated U (Universal) and is for everyone

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 20th, 2025