A Minecraft Movie (2025) | Film Review

A Minecraft Movie transports four misfits – brother and sister Henry & Natalie (Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers), real estate agent and mobile zoo entrepreneur Dawn (Danielle Brooks), and Garrett (Jason Momoa), an 80s videogame champ known as the “Garbage Man” desperately trying to make a buck to save his dying arcade – to a cubic universe known as the Overworld where they team up with builder Steve (Jack Black) to get back to their world via a magical blue block known as the Orb of Dominance. Think Transformers meets Jumanji.

Directed by Napoleon Dynamite’s Jared Hess from a script accredited to multiple writers, A Minecraft Movie is creative at its heart, but also bonkers and often nonsensical. The opening 15 minutes work overtime establishing the Overworld of Minecraft, the blocky characters that inhabit it, and Steve’s role in building it. It is pure exposition smashed together, and feels like a movie all on its own that deserved to be fleshed out rather than thinning it down to an overwhelming information dump.

Then we meet our remaining characters back in reality (complete with a glorified cameo from a delightfully madcap Jennifer Coolidge as Henry’s principal) where coincidence and story beats collide to drive them all into the Overworld with a mission to return home unscathed.  From there, we are bouncing all over plot wise as our friends fend off foes from another dimension, learn to work together, and ultimately become the perfect gaming team in their shared goal to get home.

As I alluded to earlier, the plot is ridiculous. It makes very little sense, and rarely does logic enter the chat. Having never played the game, I cannot speak to how close to the game it is. Nor should it matter. Film is a different medium, and A Minecraft Movie needs to work on its own.

Yet, despite a floundering script, there is a lot of entertainment here. The surreal, quirky humor in particular provide the majority of positive vibes the film has. This is mostly thanks to Jason Momoa’s shockingly nuanced and hilarious performance, allowing himself to be the butt of all jokes as the overconfident moron of the group. Garrett is a has-been and he knows it, yet he refuses to acknowledge it publicly. Instead, he wears the armor of a champion and packages his entire being and look based on the successes of his win back in 1989. Jack Black brings his usual manic energy, and he never gives a line a half-measure. But it is Garrett who makes every scene pop.

Overall, A Minecraft Movie is far from great cinema but despite a muddling story it is fun, the effects light up the screen, and the characters – especially the brotastic chemistry between Jason Momoa and Jack Black – really gel well together. It is ultimately Momoa, though, who is the biggest surprise and asset of the film, and he keeps this motor humming even when everything else makes little sense. Families and gamers are gonna dig this one.