Jack Black’s quintessential feature as a performer is his enthusiasm. Whether he is on-stage with his partner Kyle Gass in their two-man folk-rock duo Tenacious D or declaring the greatness of rock in School of Rock (2004), Black gushes with passionate fervor that somehow manages to merge rebel geek-boy fandom with diabolical glee. Nobody on stage or screen quite captures the same level of fervent love for a given thing than Black when he is at his most supercharged, which is why even his disembodied voice registers with such humorous effusion in the Kung Fu Panda movies. He makes you want to love what he loves.

And that is why Black was such a perfect casting choice to lead A Minecraft Movie, which is far better than any movie about the world-building online video game Minecraft has any right to be. As Steve, a depressed doorknob salesman who always wanted to be a miner and finally gets his chance when he accidentally discovers the Overworld (that is, the cubed world of Minecraft), Black gets to dive headfirst into the zealous love of the game that defines its immense fanbase. The cadence of his cackling voice, the spastic movements of his oddball body, and the wild gleam in his eye as he discovers the powers to build and create in the Minecraft world amplifies the movie with a reckless abandon. Director Jared Hess, who previously directed Black in Nacho Libre (2006), is the unlikely alchemist who manages to balance Black’s persona, outlandish action sequences, and the kind of droll humor that reminds us that this is the guy who introduced the world to Napoleon Dynamite (2004).

The screenplay, which lists no fewer than six different writers and has apparently been in some form of development for than a decade, is a cobbled-together mashup of action movie tropes, awkward buddy comedy, and familial gooiness. In another slyly brilliant casting coup, hulking, long-haired Jason Momoa plays Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison, a well-past-his-prime former video game champion who walks, talks, dresses, and drives like it is still 1989. A quintessential loser who convinces himself minute by minute that he is still a winner, Garrett is both a one-note joke and an oddly affecting portrait of willful delusion that Momoa plays to the hilt with his hot pink jacket, scraggly bangs, and faded eyeliner. Garrett runs a video game store on a dilapidated corner in a small town in Idaho, where he befriends Henry (Sebastian Hansen), a goofy-ingenious new kid in town who recently lost his parents and is now looked after by his older sister, Natalie (Emma Myers).

Together with Dawn (Danielle Brooks), a gregarious real estate agent who also runs a petting zoo as one of her many side hustles, Garrett, Henry, and Natalie stumble through the same portal that Steve did twenty years earlier and find themselves trapped in a strange world composed entirely of manipulable cubes and cube-shaped creatures. Learning how to survive in the Overworld means learning how to mine and build, and longtime fans of the game will get a kick out of seeing the purposefully minimalistic two-dimensional world they know so well brought to textured, three-dimensional life; those who know nothing of the game will likely just be confused (there is a slightly surreal quality to the whole affair, and if one were so inclined, one could watch it entirely as a meta-deconstruction of video-game-infused pop culture). The plot requires them to retrieve some mystical objects that will allow them to get back to their world, but said objects are also sought by Malgosha (Rachel House), the leader of a pig-army that resides in the hellish Nether. Oh, and there are also rampaging zombies that only come out at night, chickens you can cook with lava, and square-headed mumbling villagers, one of whom stumbles into the real world and starts up an unlikely romance with Henry’s recently divorced vice principal (Jennifer Coolidge).

While A Minecraft Movie offers lots of visual wows and plenty of shout-outs to those in the know (among whom I do not count myself, although I have kids who play), the movie really works because of the absurd macho competitiveness-turned-bromance between Black and Momoa. Because Garrett is so assured of his own alpha male status, he can’t stand that Steve knows everything about the Overworld and how to survive in it while he is a literal fish out of water, and his blundering attempts to assert himself as the lead dog play as divine undercutting comedy (the movie could have been subtitled Revenge of the Nerds). Black’s wild eyes, accentuated by his long hair and feral gray beard, play as counterpoint to Momoa’s constantly misplaced steely determination. In the end, they complete each other.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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