They will charm the youngest of attendees, and tickle the fancy of some Disney and Star Wars adults, but everyone else will just be waiting around for the next ride. Unfortunately on that count too, the rollercoaster thrill components come up lackluster; a first when compared to even the worst of the Star Wars movies that came before.
The Mandalorian and Grogu isn’t a bad film, per se, it’s just a disappointingly average one set in a universe that once inspired awe. There are still moments of fun or faint wonder betwixt the many beats undoubtedly approved in a boardroom. In fact, a particularly lovely passage of the film is entirely about the puppet. After being separated for spoilerish reasons from his papa, Grogu is forced to fend for himself in the wilderness of a swamp filmed wholly in the verticality of IMAX. Revisiting some of the quieter, simpler whimsy of early Star Wars movies, Mandalorian and Grogu briefly becomes a vibe-poem about a child’s view of the world and the goodwill that can engender.
It’s sequences like this where the special effects wizardry matches the warmth of Favreau’s early movies, and we get a sweeter, better adventure. Even David Klein’s previously blockbuster beige cinematography shakes off the blue screen and Volume soundstage doldrums of what came earlier for a saturated set of textured greens and invitingly earthy mud puddles. Alas, these grace notes are few and far between in a movie that feels still born from and constricted by its Disney+ origins.
Admittedly, I have never been a huge fan of The Mandalorian despite its early adoration on streaming, though I get the appeal. The lone warrior and his cub sidekick is a winning trope and lends itself to episodic adventures. But despite a clearly bigger budget for the occasional space battle and AT-AT sequence, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu never looks bigger than an episode of a TV show. Or maybe a couple of them.
The first and at least narratively sounder one involves Mando and his adopted child taking on the task of hunting down a leftover Imperial officer still making trouble for the New Republic on the Outer Rim of the galaxy. For those who have never watched the Disney+ show, this film is set in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi where the Empire has fallen, but the Rebel Alliance’s new galactic government is on shaky ground. Hence contracting bounty hunts from guys who look suspiciously like Boba Fett.
Mando is hired to find an Empire war criminal, but in truth his adventure is really about how he will parlay that information out of the Hutt Family. Aye, there are more Hutts than just Jabba, as indicated in The Phantom Menace 27 years ago, and his twin siblings (who are known simply as “The Twins”) will give Mando/the New Republic valuable information, provided that the bounty hunter rescues their nephew and Jabba’s son, Rotta the Hutt (played allegedly, and preposterously, by Jeremy Allen White). Yet when we find this wayward, CG space slug on a planet that looks suspiciously like Los Angeles circa Blade Runner 2049, he’s not a prisoner and barely a slug. Instead the digital creature is a buff, gladiatorial heartthrob in the local fighting pits of an urban moon.
