A Minecraft Movie

Quite apparently tied in knots by teams upon teams of writers (the finished piece is, variously, attributed to Allison Schroeder, Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta), director Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie betrays very obvious traces of this chronic overthinking and re-wiring. Denied entry to his beloved mines as a child, Jack Black's Steve, upon growing to manhood, returns with his pickaxe to tunnel his way into another, much blockier dimension. His ability to pass between this computer rendered world and ours thanks to a shining cube that, eventually, finds its way under Steve's childhood bed. A significant amount of time later, Emma Myers' twentysomething Natalie and her little brother, played by Sebastian Hansen, seem to move into Steve's long deserted home, whereupon they will find his precious gem and go on their own, Amblin-inflected adventure? Well, not quite. 

Turns out they didn't reckon upon actor-producer Jason Momoa, whose star presence demands that the tragic (and admittedly pat) backstory sketched up for this Movie's younger actors be obliterated to concentrate on detailing why Garrett, Momoa's tassel jacketed buffoon, thinks so highly of himself. It's not that Momoa particularly detracts from a film that might otherwise be completely given over to Black's increasingly monotonous honking. If anything it's sort of amusing that Momoa, a recently divorced father, can wield so much behind-the-scenes power when assembling a vehicle through which he might hope to win the eternal adulation of his own children. Although it would be impossible to adequately adapt the totality of Mojang Studios' enduring, Twitch-streamed juggernaut, it does seem notable that, when outfitting this Swedish video game property for the American big-screen experience, the filmmakers have overlooked plaintive pianos and unbridled creativity (but not the sudden transformation of sentient beings into tools that power the various mechanisms of Minecraft) to concentrate on invading subhumans and explosions. Speaking of which, can you guess how Hansen's Henry contributes to the teeming lexicon of this deliberately pre-industrial sandbox realm? That's right: he bashes together a firearm.