Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. I paid for a refillable soda and popcorn and never got a refill on either because I didn’t want to miss a minute. I sent my wife for the refill because she wanted to miss a minute. That makes me sound like a total douche. Aw, baby had to send his wifey-wife for his sody and snacky-poo cuz he didn’t wanna miss his video game show. Damn straight and she did it for me because she loves me and she’s an alpha female. Also she really had to pee so it was no impozish. Oh skadoosh! I’m speaking in Jack Black lingo!

A Minecraft Movie was way more fun than I was even expecting. That might be because I’m not a huge fan of Minecraft so my expectations were not high.

I knew Lego wanted to create something like Minecraft long ago but they (gnome minifigs) were just too dang particular about what the bricks looked like. A simple 2×2 studded lego brick (depending on the vintage) has 54 distinct surfaces inside and out, not counting the raised lettering on each stud. Lego wanted every piece of every virtual lego set to have every single surface fully modeled and rendered. A simple pyramid with a 26 stud base, made with these simple 2×2 bricks would have 44,226 distinct surfaces if it was to be composed of the 819 necessary bricks to build such a structure digitally.

Needless to say, technology at the time was not up to that demanding task and no one however technically minded could satisfactorily explain this to the Lego big wigs upstairs who didn’t want explanations about why it can’t be done and only wanted to hear how it could be done. How it could be done however would have required advancements in technology that wouldn’t be a reality for over 20 more years. Even now, to achieve the look of the digital LEGO brick they finally settled on, they have to cheat at it a bit.

Enter Markus Alexej “Notch” Persson who presumably said “Take that brick with 54 distinct sides and change it to a simpler six equilateral sided cube.”

 Next thing you know you have a brilliant and simple virtual building platform that spreads across the planet like wildfire. Lego was eating their hats cuz THEY wanted the billions of dollar bucks instead of Persson. All they needed to do was listen to their experts and not be so damn picky. Their loss.

You can get Lego sets patterned after Minecraft intellectual properties now. There’s a myriad of different Lego video games. There’s Lego movies and now there’s A Minecraft Movie. But as far as Lego’s Mass Multiplayer Online building game? It eventually came to be but never has been as widely popular as Minecraft.

(Insert smooth segue when I think of one later)

Jack Black just got done playing Bowser in the Mario movie. His hilarious 30 second ad-libbed song about Princess Peach flew to the top of the charts (I don’t know if it’s ad-libbed, it just seems like it was). The Minecraft movie jumped on to the coattails of Jack’s popularity with the kids right now which is totally understandable. And he was magical. The kids loved him in this. Every poorly executed spin kick, every truncated three-syllable word, every weird little song, the kids in the theatre ate up! And me too. I ate it up too. The kids did not eat me.

Then there was Jason Momoa. Let me just go on record as saying “I want his entire wardrobe from this movie.” He’s like a more flamboyant Randy Savage if Randy Savage was playing Peter Dinklage’s character from Pixels. Seeing Momoa and Black play off each other in these characters was a treat. Their chemistry was so good they almost had a hard time selling their not-so-understated rivalry.

The film is peppered with some cameos and references you may not catch unless you’re a Minecraft deep lore aficionado but you won’t be lost as the story progresses. As to the story itself, it’s a bit cookie cutter and pretty predictable what with the very obvious foreshadowing and deus ex machinas and whatnot. But I’m still not faulting it. This plot was really just a vehicle for Minecraft elements with Jack Black antics. You can’t have a better formula… unless there’s a great lesson.

And there was a great lesson. A couple of them. I loved when Jason was explaining his financial situation and the kid says he would have understood because he was his friend. I won’t go into further detail but it was a great moment. And there were more.

There’s a hilarious scene which employs the song “My Own Private Idaho” by the B-52’s. I have to wonder, was this because the main characters had moved to Idaho? Was it a reference to the 1991 Keanu Reeves/River Phoenix indie film of the same name loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Or was it paying homage to Jason Momoa’s character in Dune (2021) named Duncan Idaho? I don’t know that answer and it keeps me up at night, man.

The B story could have been a major derailment á la Sonic 2 with the Bridezilla scene but they kept it pretty concise which I appreciated.

The amount of kids in pajamas in this theatre was astounding to me. It’s noon! Get your kids dressed! I’m kidding. They were wearing Minecraft pajamas and having a good time. Although, there was a surprising amount more people with pickaxes than I assume the theatre management would normally permit at a single showing.

It’s a good time. Enjoy it for what it is. See it with an audience for sure. You can’t pass up that dynamic.