Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu Review
For superfans of the show, this is more of the same but in a bigger and better package. But for most viewers, this will be a tough watch.
The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu are working for the New Republic as bounty hunters for hire - although with a newfound degree of honour - when Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver) assigns him a new case; tracking down the whereabouts of Rabba The Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) for the Hutt clan, in return for new information about a nefarious Imperial leader. But when the duo find the missing Hutt, they realise that not all about this mission is as it seems.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is an extension of the television series on Disney+, and most of the issues with the film stem from this genus. It’s coming off the back of three seasons of a show that started strong, and landed somewhere decidedly not. A show that felt new and untethered from the lore, before becoming ultimately burdened by it. And a show that fell into a sort of streaming slop pattern that wound up drastically reducing its quality.
The film version feels like a season of these episodes smooshed together. The pacing and structure feels only vaguely like an actual motion picture, and it’s easy - having been a viewer of the show - to see where the episodes would have initially been planned to start and end. It makes for a decidedly frustrating viewing experience that leaves this 2 hour 12 minute movie feeling much, much longer.
From a story perspective, there are fun moments. The general idea of the mission is compelling enough, and it would have been nice to focus on a more complex extrapolation of that. Instead, the film takes great pains to shoehorn in Baby Yoda humour, to push other characters from the broader lore to the front, and to lean into big action set pieces that chew up runtime with little actually at stake. And for those diehard fans of the show, maybe that works for you. As a casual fan of the show, this film feels like it doubles down on all the things that reduced the quality of the show over the seasons, rather than returning to the peak form of the initial season. Although at least this feels less ‘volume-y’ than the tv iteration.
More broadly, for a casual Star Wars fan or moviegoer who has not watched the Disney+ seasons, you’re in for a tough watch. The film takes absolutely zero interest in giving any context on who these two characters are, and assumes you’ve seen the TV show. That is fine for those who have, but for other cinema-goers, it is a baffling experience.
