I must confess that I am not a target audience for “A Minecraft Movie”. Even when I was young and wild, my mind was mostly drawn to movies and books instead of playing video games, and, yes, I am not changed much even at this point. As a matter of fact, I have rarely touched video games during the last three decades, even though I occasionally check on the current trend of video games via the reviews written by others (Being out of touch is the last thing I want, folks).

While there are a number of goofy comic moments for my little amusement, “A Minecraft Movie” did not engage me a lot mainly because I was often frustrated with how shallow and predictable it is in terms of story and characters. Sure, it simply wants to have much fun with its video game world, its world is not very interesting and refreshing to me, and I simply followed one narrative stage after another as being more aware of my dwindling interest in the film.

Nonetheless, its target audiences will definitely be delighted by all those familiar stuffs unfolded onto the screen right from the opening part, which shows us how a plain dude named Steve (Jack Black) happened to enter a fantasy world called the “Overworld”. Although he is quite baffled by this odd world at first, it does not take much time for Steve to learn how to wield his creative power onto this world, and he certainly becomes much happier compared to when he was just a middling salesman.

However, the Overworld is subsequently threatened by Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House), the evil ruler of the Nether. Using a certain magical object obtained by Steve, Malgosha tries to conquer the Overworld, but, before he eventually gets captured and then imprisoned, Steve manages to hide that object thanks to his royal wolf, which comes over to Steve’s world and then hides it somewhere inside his house.

And the movie shifts its focus onto several other main characters in the story. Following their dead mother’s wish, Natalie (Emma Myers) and her younger brother Henry (Sebastian Hansen) move to a little town in Idaho, but Henry is not particularly happy about this as your average nerdy kid. Right from his first day in a local elementary school, he feels more like a loner, and then he inadvertently causes a big trouble for both him and his older sister.

Meanwhile, Henry happens to befriend Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa), a former video game champion who has been struggling to run his shabby little video game store. Among Garrett’s recently acquired stuffs, Henry notices one strange object, and, of course, that turns out to be that magical object belonging to Steve. Once Henry activates that object, he and Garrett get themselves pulled into the portal to the Overworld, and Natalie and her real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks) also come to follow them by coincidence.

Meanwhile, Steve returns to the Overworld because Malgosha demands that he should retrieve that magical object for her, but he soon joins Henry and his group for stopping Malgosha. As they move onto one stage after another, they certainly face a number of challenging situations, and Steve sometimes functions as their guide and instructor.

Now this is pretty much like what we previous saw from “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” (2017) and its following 2019 sequel, but “A Minecraft Movie” fails to generate enough interest to hold our attention mainly due to its deficient storytelling. While the drama involved with the strained relationship between Henry and his older sister is half-baked to say the least, the unexpected comradeship between Steve and Garrett is mostly used for a series of cheap gags, and a subplot involved with the school vice principal by Jennifer Coolidge feels rather distracting. At least, Coolidge, who has always been game for anything funny, goes all the way for this redundant part, but I think several little audiences around me did not get much of her blatantly silly moments in the film.

In case of several other main cast members in the film, they fill their respective roles as much as possible, and some of them acquit themselves well. While Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen do not have much to do as being stuck in their thankless straight parts, Danielle Brooks, who deserves better considering her recent Oscar-nominated supporting turn in “The Color Purple” (2023), manages to bring some extra humor to the story, and Jack Black and Jason Momoa willingly go over the top for more silliness. Both of them are certainly no stranger to looking goofy and exaggerated, and Momoa, who also participated in the production of the movie, gleefully and shamelessly chews every moment of his from throughout the film.

On the whole, “A Minecraft Movie” left me without much to remember, and that is a considerable disappointment compared to the previous works of director Jared Hess. I did not like his breakthrough work “Napoleon Dynamite” (2004) that much, but I sort of understand its offbeat charm to some degree, and I was subsequently delighted by “Ninety-Five Senses” (2022), a weirdly funny Oscar-nominated animation short film from him and his wife. Considering that it has been earning a lot more than expected, there will surely be at least one sequel, and I sincerely hope that I will be more entertained by whatever may come after this mildly ludicrous product.