“The Minecraft movie feels so hard to criticize once you've actually watched it because it's [sic] mission objective is to be as stupid as humanly possible and it's hard to say if there was anything it could have done to be more […] stupid.” That’s what X user @RowbyYT has to say about Mojang’s 2025 film, A Minecraft Movie, which has been delighting kids and disappointing everyone else since its release on April 4th. The movie follows four misfits (Jason Momoa, Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen) who are ripped from their boring town and sucked into the strange, cubic world of Mojang’s hit 2009 video game, Minecraft. In order to find their way home, they must work with Minecraft resident Steve (Jack Black) to defeat the evil Piglin sorceress Malgosha (Rachel House) and protect the Overworld.

We went into this movie with abysmally low hopes—and, yes, we did sprint out of the theatre after exactly thirty seconds. Granted, that was because we hadn’t realized we’d bought 3D tickets and needed to get ourselves some glasses at the last minute, but our point still stands.

Our biggest qualm with this movie is that its plot boils down to a poorly-executed Jumanji rip-off. While the original Minecraft game itself doesn’t have a particularly strong storyline, it does have a clear end goal: defeat the Ender Dragon. Perhaps if the writers had used that goal as their plot framework rather than the overused ‘sucked into a video game’ trope, the movie would have felt less trite.

Somehow, even though it does not adhere to Minecraft’s actual story framework, A Minecraft Movie is bloated with so many game easter eggs that it is forced to spend much of its runtime explaining the workings of less important items like redstone and ender pearls. Still, despite their dedication to these niche game rules, the writers never hesitate to throw game rules out the window when it is convenient, resulting in many deus ex machina moments that sabotage the movie’s coherence. Additionally, about halfway through the film, the two female protagonists are cornered into a weaker side plot while the three male protagonists continue to enjoy a majority of the screen time, which was extremely disappointing to watch. 

The writers’ tendency to resort to what we like to call ‘buttcrack humor’ also takes away from the movie’s enjoyability for anyone above the age of twelve. Yes, we understand that the movie’s target audience is a young one, but children’s movies are meant to be enjoyed by entire families—take, for instance, Inside Out and Despicable Me, which employ layers of humor for different audiences. Those movies, among others, are proof that a young target audience is not an excuse for a poor quality movie.

A Minecraft Movie also suffers because of its strange visual effects choices. The animation is unsettling—atrocious, even—and seeing it in 3D made it even worse for us. We couldn’t help but wonder why the visual effects team didn’t use a style closer to the 2010s Minecraft parodies on YouTube, which struck a much better balance between 3D animation and loyalty to the game’s visuals.

There are, of course, still some merits to this movie. For one, it was incredibly entertaining to the children sitting to either side of us in the theater, who laughed at every silly song and buttcrack joke. The movie also redeems itself a little bit by concluding with a sweet message about staying weird. After all, moral lessons are the essence of a good children’s film.

Overall, we would give A Minecraft Movie a whopping one star. If you’re under twelve, though, we’re sure you’ll love it!