Um Filme Minecraft

The film's anarchy might reflect a lot of younger players' first experience with Minecraft, where destruction can be just as fun as creation. Missing on the big screen, meanwhile, is the odd, remote atmosphere that drew me in.

"A Minecraft Movie" is quirky and goofy enough to make one wish it held together better overall, but it's also a likable venture.

Jack Black and Jason Momoa together, they're okay; so it's perfectly unremarkable.

It's got enough personality to make me wish that Hess had had a still freer hand... Don't mistake my curiosity for enthusiasm. I can't recommend that anyone see A Minecraft Movie, not even a child.

Jared Hess directed Napoleon Dynamite. This movie is as if Napoleon Dynamite directed it, not Jared.

For a wildly imaginative world-building project, the film is mostly ghastly to look at... if the possibilities of this world are endless, why does it all devolve into violent, ugly, boring warfare?

It feels like a small miracle that the resulting film is so funny, lively, and light on its feet.

A Minecraft Movie feigns creativity by hollowing out a name brand and inserting a zombified story that does little more than capitalize on (or cannibalize) the name.

Mr. Hess and his five screenwriters have mined childhood to craft something that's alive with imagination. It's not the most polished movie you'll see this year, but it's as cheerfully mad as a little kid's birthday party. We could use more of that.

What makes A Minecraft Movie so dispiriting is how it fails to spark the imagination, betraying a core tenet of the game on which it's based

There's a self-reflexivity to the game's artifact-y textures that's lost in this film adaptation, where the finely detailed look of just about everything says nothing in itself about the endless possibilities of a digital world's malleability.

The comic pairing of Jack Black and Jason Momoa makes this video game-turned-PG-movie pablum seem better than the cash grab it is. But not by much. Still, there's no shame in being strictly kids' stuff that knows how to serve and entertain its audience.

Another example of Hollywood shoving a beloved property into the factory mold (cube-shaped mold, natch), hoping name recognition will be enough to justify its existence.

Turning Minecraft into a movie presents a challenge, because the film has a lot of character development to catch up on. But, as The Lego Movie and Barbie have demonstrated, it's possible to get it spectacularly right.

We just don't want to be the one to inform God what his creations hath wrought with this expensively cheap, 100-percent corporate mess.

The biggest surprise is that "A Minecraft Movie" ends up feeling more necessary in an era of depreciating art appreciation.

There's a great comedy in here somewhere that has nothing at all to do with "Minecraft," which just shows that as a storyteller, Hess has plenty of gas left in his tank.

Hess' take on Minecraft is essentially a meathead version of "The Wizard of Oz." Four ragtag Idaho acquaintances blunder into the Overworld and beg Jack Black's wizard-bearded blowhard for help returning home. Yes, Toto, there's a cubist dog, too

Its appreciation for the endless potential of imagination should be more likely to inspire viewers to try to play the game or even create their own.

Th[e] loosey-goosey attitude, an "open sandbox" if you will, is a breath of fresh air after so many family films that seem preordained by lore.