A Minecraft Movie: Kiwi-shot film is low-stakes fun for kids

This film has been a long time coming.

Plans for an adaptation of the beloved video game Minecraft kicked off in 2014. A decade on, in a real treat for Kiwi fans, the entire film shot was shot in New Zealand.

Auckland's Event Cinemas was decked out with pixelated swords, hammers, potatoes, and carrot props, which parents and kids eagerly posed with on the red carpet. By evening, it was time for the stars to arrive.

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Rachel House, who voices the evil Piglin queen Malgosha, was joined by newcomer Sebastian Hansen, who plays Henry, the bright and curious kid at the film’s centre.

House revealed she hadn't yet seen the film - it would be her first time watching it at the New Zealand premiere. Meanwhile, Hansen arrived fresh from the film's London premiere, even squeezing in a few hours of school before showing up.

Watching the sheer excitement of the kids around me, I kept thinking - this must be the coolest experience for a young Minecraft fan.

I had no idea what to expect going into this film. I get the basics of the sandbox game - where you mine and you craft - but beyond that, I have zero experience actually playing it.

I don't have the nostalgia of an adult who grew up with it, nor do I have the imagination of a child currently obsessed with it. I went in with a semi-open mind and put the film to a neutral test - could it stand on its own?

I say semi-open because there were a couple of initial reservations around narrative. How were the filmmakers going to extract a 90-minute story from a game with no apparent plot? I had similar doubts about Barbie in 2023, and that proved me completely wrong, so I let those hating thoughts fly right by and buckled in.

The story takes place in the Overworld, a cube-shaped realm where almost anything can be crafted from basic units. Four people from the real world find themselves transported into this strange environment: young genius Henry (Sebastian Hansen), his sister and guardian Natalie (Emma Myers), their animal-loving friend Dawn (Danielle Brooks), and washed-up video gamer Garrett Garrison (Jason Momoa). Lost and bewildered, they meet Steve (Jack Black), a former real-worlder who has mastered the Overworld’s mechanics.

House is in an amusingly low-stakes villain role as Malgosha, an evil sorceress with an unmistakable New Zealand accent and a hatred for creativity. Meanwhile, Jennifer Coolidge plays Marlene, a slightly delusional and recently divorced school vice principal.

Coolidge's side plot is a real winner - her character hits a Minecraft villager with her car and then proceeds to fall deeply in love with him. It’s as absurd as it sounds, and it works, because Coolidge's comedic timing is just that good.

Visually, the film can take some getting used to - Overworld is saturated in a way that can feel jarring at first, mixing live-action characters with a hyper-stylized world. But that vibrancy is necessary to replicate the colorful world of the video game, so it can be forgiven.

The real world setting, on the other hand, is done very well. Huntly doubles as the fictional town of Chuglass, Idaho, with its massive power station serving as a potato chip factory, while Helensville provides the backdrop for the Game Over World store and petting zoo.

The story itself isn’t groundbreaking, but it delivers exactly what it promises - low-stakes, entertaining fun. There’s an evil pig army, a theatrical villain, and battle sequences that cleverly reference Minecraft's gameplay mechanics.

The film never takes itself too seriously, and that self-awareness is what makes it enjoyable.

Black carries a lot of the film’s energy - his line delivery and physicality are always on point, and he breaks into epic rock arias - including one with Momoa - that feels a bit Tenacious D-adjacent.

Momoa is funnier than expected, playing a man who peaked as a teenage gamer back in 1989. He's delusional but sweet and has great chemistry with Black. And Coolidge continues to shine at playing delightful variations of her well-loved persona - a woman hungry for love and blind to the flaws in men.

Overall, A Minecraft Movie is goofy and fun. It’s the kind of movie that keeps kids entertained while throwing in just enough humour for the adults in the room. There were probably three or four times I genuinely laughed out loud.

As I left the theatre, I overheard a little girl excitedly telling her mum that she had so many new ideas for what to build in Minecraft now - and that's probably a stronger endorsement than anything else.