A Minecraft Movie (2025) review

This big-screen "adaptation" of Markus Persson's game Minecraft was kind of inevitable, really, considering its popularity: here, miner extraordinaire Steve (Jack Black) has given up his life in the "Outerworld" to live permanently in the "Overworld" (along with his wolf companion Dennis) where he can create all sorts of structures and items by collecting raw materials, but when fellow humans Garrett (Jason Momoa), Dawn (Danielle Brooks), Natalie (Emma Myers) and her autistic brother Henry (Sebastian Hansen) accidentally drop in, Steve needs to get them back to Earth.  While casting Black to essentially carry the entire movie with his relentless enthusiasm was a wise move - he's the ultimate theatre kid-turned-grown-up - it took no less than five credited individuals to come up with the doltish, unimaginative screenplay: it might not have been the easiest task to generate a narrative from a sandbox game, except this never feels like anything more than a flagrant cash-grab (and advertisement).  Since a sizeable number of the Minecraft obsessives tend to be "on the spectrum" - I say this with full respect and actually know a few myself - that explains the inclusion of the Henry character ... but that's just more pandering.