By John Corrado
The first theatrically released Star Wars movie in seven years since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian and Grogu serves as a big screen spinoff of the Disney Plus series. And it’s pretty good, offering an enjoyable if undemanding space adventure for the fans.
After three seasons of The Mandalorian, this movie from director Jon Favreau serves as a sort of condensed fourth season. The film builds off the show’s lore, while also cleverly being allowed to mostly work as a standalone story, even if you haven’t done the homework of watching the series.
Like the show, the story is set after the fall of the Galactic Empire, with our helmeted Mandalorian hero Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his alien sidekick Grogu, known colloquially as Baby Yoda, collecting bounties by tracking down Imperial fugitives.
They are hired by Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), a leader in the New Republic, to find Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), son of Jabba the Hutt. The agreement is that they will return him to his powerful crime family, in exchange for getting information from them. Along the way, they encounter various alien creatures – including a jittery food vendor voiced by none other than Martin Scorsese – and fight a few monsters. This is a “creature feature” in a lot of ways.
This isn’t a demanding or particularly complex narrative, but Favreau, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor, knows not to try and reinvent the wheel, instead crafting a fairly straight-forward, B-movie plot that mainly serves to set up obstacles for our heroes to get out of. Sure, it can feel like a few episodes stitched together, with a pace that often feels episodic, but it’s fun enough on a set-piece by set-piece basis to be entertaining.
The film hits the ground running with an opening action sequence that instantly establishes the larger scale of this feature compared to the show. The space dogfights and various explosions, aided by Ludwig Göransson’s pounding score, are enough to justify the theatrical experience, and when the film expands to fill the IMAX screen from top to bottom, it does feel quite immersive.
Even if the scope still seems a bit limited, at its best, The Mandalorian and Grogu feels enough like an old school Star Wars movie to be a satisfying viewing experience. And, after the disappointment of The Rise of Skywalker, which closed out Disney’s sequel trilogy, that feels like enough.
The main attraction, of course, is Grogu himself. The hungry alien remains adorable, and the film serves as a testament to having a real puppet on set. The little guy steals every scene, even if he’s just waddling around in the background, and the paternal bond that Din Djarin has with him is what gives this entertaining space adventure its heart.
Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)
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