Oof this is a hard one to score. On the one hand, my kids absolutely loved it and it was everything they wanted from a Minecraft movie. There’s a reunion late in the film that had my son slapping both his knees with relief and delight and he was fully invested. For kids, this film is absolutely delivering the goods.

On the other hand, “kids like it” isn’t an excuse for a film to not really try. What we’re left with is a film about creativity that demonstrates almost no creativity in itself. Jack Black’s entire direction appears to have been “just do your normal Jack Black thing pls”. The main characters have no arc and are completely forgotten for large parts of the film, completely lost in the messy action. There were a couple of nice creature effects, but most of the effects felt flat and volume-y.

On the the other other hand (we’re on our third hand now), this really could have been a lot worse.