The ‘Minecraft’ Movie Features an Extremely Subtle Flight of the Conchords Reunion
Unless you’ve been living under a perfectly square CGI rock, you’re probably aware that A Minecraft Movie is a massive hit at the box office. This isn’t a huge surprise, considering that it appeals to both kids and Zoomers who grew up with the video game — plus all the people who just want to spend an hour and forty minutes watching literally anything other than the complete collapse of the global economy.
But the film is also notable for reuniting one of the most popular musical comedy duos of the 21st century: Flight of the Conchords.
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Well, sort of.
Eagle-eyed fans may have noticed that both Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie are credited in A Minecraft Movie. This is significant because the two haven’t performed together since the 2018 special Flight of the Conchords: Live in London.
And the only project that the guys have both acted in since their HBO show ended in 2009 was the low-budget New Zealand horror comedy Diagnosis Death, which was released just a few months after the finale aired. At one point, McKenzie claimed that they had plans to make a Flight of the Conchords movie, but that project never came to fruition.
But now we have A Minecraft Movie, in which Clement appears as a mustachioed storage unit auctioneer.
And Bret McKenzie plays… Wait, who does he play?
Well, McKenzie is credited as “Nitwit Onset Performer.” That’s because Nitwit, the blockish monstrosity that stumbles into our universe from the “Overworld” and immediately begins dating Jennifer Coolidge, has a head that’s entirely computer-generated. But apparently, the body is really McKenzie’s. According to Digital Spy, he wore “a physical block costume made by the movie’s costume designer Amanda Neale.”
"It was a lot because Bret is — I mean, this is not very nice to say — more attractive than Nitwit,” Coolidge explained. “Bret McKenzie’s a genius and it’s hard to do a performance through a cardboard box and still have you laughing, but he was able to do it.”
McKenzie didn’t even get to do Nitwit’s voice in the film’s mid-credit scene, that job went to What We Do in the Shadows Star Matt Berry. Which begs the question: Was this the best role they could give to McKenzie? And couldn’t someone less qualified have gotten the deformed NPC stand-in part? Not only was McKenzie the co-star of a wildly popular TV show, he’s a literal Oscar winner. He took home the Best Song Academy Award in 2012 for penning “Man or Muppet” from The Muppets.
Plus, they hired both Clement and McKenzie but never put them in a scene together? Would you cast Simon and Garfunkel in the same movie, then keep them separate for the entire thing and superimpose a goofy looking cartoon face over Art Garfunkel?
