Rachel House Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen

April 3, 2025

by Carla Hay

Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen and Jason Momoa in “A Minecraft Movie” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

Directed by Jared Hess

Culture Representation: Taking place on Earth and in a magical place called the Overworld, the fantasy/action film “A Minecraft Movie” (based on the “Minecraft” video game series) features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Five people get caught up in the Overworld, where there’s a battle over a magical cubed crystal and a magical orb.

Culture Audience: “A Minecraft Movie” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Minecraft” video game series, the movie’s headliners and fantasy action flicks that use visual effects to distract from a weak story.

Piglins in “A Minecraft Movie” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“A Minecraft Movie” should be called “A Minecrap Movie.” This adaptation of the “Minecraft” video game series is a sloppy mishmash of incoherent action, bad jokes and a messy plot. It’s also a flimsy excuse for Jack Black to sing forgettable songs. Even though this movie is geared more toward children than adults, it’s an insult to people’s intelligence, regardless of age. And there’s more idiocy to come: “A Minecraft Movie” has an end-credits scene that’s a thinly veiled announcement that a sequel has already been planned.

Directed by Jared Hess, “A Minecraft Movie” had the freedom to make an entirely new story because the “Minecraft” games are about users building their own worlds with their own rules and inhabitants. The common denominator in “Minecraft” (which is the best-selling video game of all time) is that things and creatures are look like cube-shaped blocks. Unfortunately, that freedom to be clever is squandered in “A Minecraft Movie.” Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta co-wrote the screenplay for “A Minecraft Movie,” which definitely looks like the screenplay suffers from “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome.

“A Minecraft Movie” is the type of movie where if you miss the first five to eight minutes, you might be confused for the rest of the movie. That’s because “A Minecraft Movie” begins with an overly long, rambling exposition dump from a narrator named Steve (played by Black), who says when he was a kid, he wanted to work in the mines to discover treasures. The only problem? Kids weren’t allowed to work in the mines.

Steve, who lives in a fictional U.S. city called Chuglass, grew up to work in a drab office in an unnamed job. (“A Minecraft Movie” was actually filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.) Steve compares how he is as an adult, compared to when he was a child: “Same shirt, same pants, no soul.” Steven revived his childhood dreams and went back to the mines. “This time, I was unstoppable,” Steven says.

During this mining excursion, Steve discovered a glowing cubed crystal and a glowing orb. When he put these two objects together, it opened a portal to a magical land called Overworld, which is described in the movie’s production notes as “a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination.” Keep that “imagination” part in mind when you see how little imagination this movie has.

Steve found out that he could create his own world, which he called Steve’s World, by using magical power that makes cube-shaped objects, similar to how people can build Lego objects. Some of the things he created included a loyal dog named Dennis and a casual restaurant called Steve’s Chicken Shack, which serves lava chicken. (Lava chicken is supposed to be spicy and hot, just like lava.)

Overworld has an area called Nether (which is Otherworld’s version of hell), where villains called Piglins (which look like pig mutants) live and have an insatiable desire for gold. The Piglins are led by Malgosha (played by Allan Henry and voiced by Rachel House), who is dressed like she thinks she’s the Grim Reaper. Malgosha is quite dull and predictable.

The Piglins tried to capture Steve and Dennis, but Steve and Dennis escape. During this escape, Steve give Dennis the glowing orb to hide underneath Steve’s waterbed back in Steve’s house on Earth. In hindsight, Steve thinks this was not a good hiding place. And he’s right because someone else ends up with the orb.

“A Minecraft Movie” then has a jumbled introduction to the four people who eventually end up joining Steve in Overworld to fight the Piglins.

Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (played by Jason Momoa) was a teenage world champion of a “Garbage Man” video game in 1989. Garrett acts like he’s stuck in 1989, including wearing a fringed leather jacket and singing along (very off-key) to Skid Row’s “I Remember You” when he’s driving in his beat-up car. Garrett lives and works in Chuglass, where he owns a video game store that’s close to getting evicted and going out of business.
Natalie (played by Emma Myers) and Henry (played by Sebastian Hansen) are teenage siblings who have recently moved to Chuglass because Natalie has gotten a job as the social media manager for Chuglass Potato Chips. Natalie is supposed to be about 18 or 19 years old, but she looks like she’s about 15 or 16. Henry is about 14 or 15 years old. Their single mother recently died, which is why Natalie and Henry have moved to Chuglass to start a new life.
Dawn (played by Danielle Brooks) is the real-estate agent who did the deal for the house where Natalie and Henry are living in Chuglass. Dawn (who is sometimes upbeat and sometimes sassy) also has other “side hustle” jobs, including providing zoo animals for parties and other events. She drives around in a car with the company name Zoo on Wheels, with some of the zoo animals in the car.

Garrett is desperate for money, so he goes to a place called Storage World, which is run by a sleazy operator named Daryl (played by Jemaine Clement) because Garrett thinks he can find something valuable in a box for an old video game called Cosmos. Garrett pays $900 in a Storage World auction for the box, but he is disappointed to find nothing of value in it. Instead, there’s a glowing object in the storage unit. Guess which glowing object it is.

“A Minecraft Movie” has a poorly written sequence of events to show how Garrett, Natalie, Henry and Dawn end up in the Overworld. Henry is a new student enrolled at Chuglass High School, where he’s immediately bullied by some other students for being a nerd. Natalie and Henry have very generic personalities that do not enliven this already limp story.

Vice Principal Marlene (played by Jennifer Coolidge) is the school official who meets with Natalie and Henry. She gives them an earful about having recently gone through a bitter divorce from her ex-husband Clemente, who is never seen in the movie. If you know that Coolidge has been typecast as playing flaky and weird characters, then you can easily predict what type of personality Vice Principal Marlene has and how she will act.

One day, Henry goes into Garrett’s video game store and thinks Garrett is so cool, he agrees to Garrett’s con game of saying he can be Henry’s life coach for $50 an hour. Henry is an aspiring rocket scientist, so he tries to impress his schoolmates by taking a life-sized skeleton model from biology class and attaching a jet pack to it. It’s a complete disaster, of course: There’s a big explosion that damages the some of the school’s property.

Henry is called into the office of Vice Principal Marlene because he’s in big trouble. Natalie is too busy at work and Henry doesn’t want her to find out. And so, Henry calls Garrett and asks Garrett to pretend to be Henry’s uncle who will be the adult to meet with Vice Principal Marlene about Henry causing this property destruction problem.

Garrett agrees to pretend to be Henry’s uncle, for a price. When Vice Principal Marlene sees Garrett, she acts horny and starts flirting with him. Later, the movie goes to unnecessary and very unfunny scenes of Vice Principal Marlene on a dinner date with a mute creature from Overworld.

Henry’s trouble at school leads up to a scene where he goes missing because he’s hanging out with Garrett but didn’t tell Natalie. Natalie panics when she can’t find Henry, so she calls Dawn to help her look for Henry. Dawn and Natalie eventually find Henry at Garrett’s house, shortly before Henry finds the glowing orb and the glowing cubed crystal in Garrett’s garage.

Even though there’s a handwritten note (presumably from Steve) saying not to put the crystal and the orb together, it should come as no surprise that curious Henry puts the crystal and the orb together. The portal opens and drags Henry, Natalie, Garrett and Dawn into the Overworld, where they meet Steve. If you don’t like the way this sequence of events is described, then imagine watching it all happen in the movie, where seeing it unfold is infinitely worse than getting a description.

“A Minecraft Movie” (whose visual effects are not as great as they should be) then becomes a chaotic blur of chase scenes and people inventing weapons in the Overworld to battle against the Piglins and other opponents. A place called Woodland Mansion is the key to getting the “heroes” back home. The movie gets even more tiresome when Steve and Garrett (who are both very loud and insecure) compete to be the “alpha male” of the Overworld. Meanwhile, the male characters in “A Minecraft Move” get the best action scenes, while the female characters spend half of their action scenes cheering on the male characters.

Throughout this dreadful movie, Garrett tells terrible jokes that shows he has a fixation on rear ends because he has say something vaguely sexual or violent in references to bottoms. For example, Steve breaks out into song about four times, which must’ve been something that actor/singer Black insisted on in his “Minecraft” contract, since he sings some songs (none of them award-worthy) that were written specifically for the movie. At one point, Steve sings his jingle for Steve’s Chicken Shack. Garrett’s response: “I have a small business too. And one thing I try not to do is have my jingles suck butt.”

The low-quality of the screenplay, the unimpressive acting performances, and the overall substandard filmmaking for “A Minecraft Movie” won’t make a difference to people who just want to see a “Minecraft” movie, no matter how terrible it is. Children under the age of 10 might be dazzled by the movie’s visuals, but experienced moviegoers can spot the raggedy computer-generated imagery in some of the scenes. “A Minecraft Movie” is a mind-numbing experience, which might satisfy viewers who don’t care about having an inventive story in a “Minecraft” world. People who care about preserving their brain cells should steer clear of this cinematic abomination.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “A Minecraft Movie” in U.S. cinemas on April 4, 2025.

Review: ‘Moana 2,’ starring the voices of Auli’i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Hualālai Chung, Rose Matafeo, Awhimai Fraser, Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda, Temuera Morrison and Nicole Scherzinger

November 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

“Moana 2”

Directed by David G. Derrick Jr.; co-directed by Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller

Culture Representation: Taking place in ancient Polynesia, the animated musical film “Moana 2” (a sequel to the 2016 animated film “Moana”) features a cast of characters who are human Pacific Islanders, gods or animals.

Culture Clash: Teenage adventurer Moana goes off on another sea voyage, but this time, it’s to find a long-lost island that can bring other Pacific Islanders together.

Culture Audience: “Moana 2” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of 2016’s “Moana,” the movie’s headliners and Disney princess movies.

Pictured clockwise, from left: Kele (voiced by David Fane), Moni (voiced by Hualālai Chung), Loto (voiced by Rose Matafeo) and Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) in “Moana 2” (Image courtesy of Disney Enterprises Inc.)

“Moana 2” didn’t learn the sequel lesson that more characters in a sequel don’t automatically make a better movie. Fans of 2016’s “Moana” should find enough to like in this sequel, which is adequately entertaining but inferior to the original “Moana” film. It’s the type of sequel that replicates much of the same “voyage at sea” concept as the series’ first movie but doesn’t do much to make it more innovative or more exciting.

“Moana 2” was directed by David G. Derrick Jr., and co-directed by Jason Hand and Dana Ledoux Miller—a different team from John Musker and Ron Clements, who directed “Moana.” Jared Bush, who wrote “Moana,” returns as the screenwriter for “Moana 2,” which has Ledoux Miller as an additional screenwriter. “Moana” composer Mark Mancina also returns for this sequel with Opetaia Foa‘i as writers of some of the movie’s original songs. However, Lin-Manuel Miranda (who co-wrote many of the original songs in “Moana”) is not part of “Moana 2.” Instead, “Moana 2” has Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear as co-writers of most of “Moana 2’s” original songs. The end results in “Moana 2” are predictable and formulaic but not entirely disappointing.

In “Moana” (which takes place in ancient Polynesia), teenage Moana (played by Auli’i Cravalho) goes on a seafaring journey to give back a poweful precious stone to the goddess of nature Te Fiti (who is also a living island), in order to save Moana’s island of Motunui from a food shortage that could lead to massive starvation for the people of Montunui. Along the way, Moana teams up with a wisecracking and shapeshifting demi-god of the wind named Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson), who stole the precious stone many centuries ago. Moana also finds her identity and confidence as someone who can lead an adventurous voyage and do good things for her community.

In “Moana 2,” the stakes are much lower than life or death for the people of Motunui. Moana is now a proven heroic voyager, but Motunui is still isolated from other people in the Pacific Islands. Moana is visited in a vision by Tautai Vasa (voiced by Gerald Faitala Ramsey), one of Motunui’s orginal adventurers, who tells Moana to find the long-lost island of Motufetū, which can connect other people who live in the Pacific Ocean.

In order to find Motufetū, Moana has to battle against Nalo (voiced by Tofiga Fepulea’i), the god of storms who sunk Motufetū, thereby separating Pacific Islanders to prevent them from connecting with each other. It’s a muddled plot that only makes sense if you’re willing to believe that certain land in “Moana” can have mystical powers. As explained in the “Moana” movies, the people of Motunui were taught for generations to fear going outside a certain radius from their land.

Nalo has captured a mysterious woman named Mitangi (played by Awhimai Fraser), who has lived inside a giant clam for the past 1,000 years. Nalo has ordered Mitangi to stop anyone from finding Motufetū. Mitangi, who surrounds herself with flying foxes, isn’t quite the fearsome opponent that she needed to be to make “Moana 2” more thrilling. Her big musical number is when she performs a song called “Get Lost.” Mitangi is no Ursula (the sea-dwelling ruthless villain from “The Little Mermaid”) because Mitangi’s personality is being a fairly generic villain.

In “Moana 2,” Moana’s parents Chief Tui (voiced by as Temuera Morrison) and Sina (voiced by Nicole Scherzinger) have less importance to the story than they did in “Moana,” which had overprotective Chief Tui telling Moana not to risk her life as a voyager because she’s female. Moana received Chief Tui’s respect and permission to go on voyages at the end of the first “Moana” movie, so there’s not much reason for her to rebel against her parents in “Moana 2.” Moana’s beloved paternal grandmother Gramma Tala (voiced by Rachel House), who died in “Moana,” makes a cameo appearance in “Moana 2” as a ghostly vision.

“Moana 2” introduces a new family character, who is a cliché that many animated sequels have: the adorable kid who’s under the age of 10. “Moana 2” shows that Moana now has a younger sister named Simea (voiced by Khaleesi Lambert-Tsuda), who’s about 4 or 5 years old. Simea’s only purpose in “Moana 2” is to show how much she wants to be an adventurer, just like Moana. In other words, Simea was created to most likely have her own animated spinoff.

As for Maui, there is nothing that’s very new or interesting about him. He still has tattoos that move around on his body, with the tattoos having the ability to portray many of his life experiences. He’s still cocky and prone to getting himself into embarrassing situations. He’s still the impulsive counterpoint to the more logical Moana. He is still the biggest comic relief, although Maui’s presence is diluted in “Moana 2” because the movie is a bit overstuffed with new characters.

In “Moana,” the only people on the sailboat voyage were Moana and Maui, accompanied by Moana’s slow-witted pet rooster Heihei (voiced by Alan Tudyk), who stowed away on the boat. “Moana 2” makes the misstep of having too many people on the voyage with Moana and Maui, thereby giving them more backup allies and less suspense in their chances of winning in any fights. Also on the voyage in “Moana 2” are Moana’s sassy best friend Loto (played by Rose Matafeo), elderly worrier Kele (voiced by David Fane) and burly storykeeper Moni (voiced by Hualālai Chung), who greatly admires Moana and Maui. The accompanying animals on this “Moana 2” voyage are Heihei and Moana’s cute pet pig Pua.

When only Moana and Maui there to protect each other in the first “Moana” movie, any danger they encountered seemed to be more of a challenge. In fact, one of the ways that “Moana 2” misses the mark is in making everything safer and less surprising than the first “Moana,” which already had enough predictability. The animation in “Moana 2” is perfectly fine but isn’t as vibrant as the first “Moana” movie.

“Moana” had bigger issues about environmental protection at the heart of the story, while “Moana 2” is more about Moana hanging out with her boat mates so they can find new friends. “Moana 2” makes more of an effort than “Moana” to incorporate Pacific Islander culture dancing into the story. However, the introduction of Moana’s new boat mates seems forced and contrived, as if this is the “Moana” version of the “Gilligan’s Island” motley crew.

The songs and musical score in “Moana 2” are pleasant, but the movie isn’t a journey chock full of memorable hits. “Can I Get a Chee Hoo?,” which has Johnson on lead vocals, is one of the fun tracks that does a good job of capturing Maui’s sense of playfulness. The anthemic “Beyond” and “What Can Be Better Than This?” are the obvious showcase songs for “Moana 2,” with Cravalho on lead vocals. Are these songs catchy and entertaining? Yes. Are they iconic as Disney animation tunes “We Need to Talk About Bruno” (from “Encanto”) or “Let It Go” (from “Frozen”)? Frankly, no.

The “Moana 2” voice cast performances are very good but would have more of an impact if the overall story and screenplay had been more engaging and more innovative. Mitangi’s most memorable line is when she gives this bland advice to Moana: “There’s always another way, even if you have to get lost to find it.” A mid-credits scene featuring Nolo and Mitangi can be considered a hint of what the story could be for another “Moana” sequel.

People who’ve seen 2016’s “Moana” might have varying expectations for “Moana 2,” which was originally going to be a straight-to-streaming project for Disney+, instead of getting a theatrical release. A live-action “Moana” is due out in 2026, with Johnson reprising his role as Maui. In other words, Disney is overloading on “Moana” but isn’t doing enough to come up with any ideas to take this franchise to new and creative storytelling levels.

Walt Disney Pictures will release “Moana 2” in U.S. cinemas on November 27, 2024.