The Mandalorian & Grogu was the first Star Wars movie to hit theaters since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it is the first movie to be based on a streaming series. The good news is that the movie is miles better than The Rise of Skywalker, and no one has to have seen the streaming series to enjoy the new movie.
There have been a lot of lackluster critics’ reviews of the new Star Wars movie, and it seems strange that the complaints are that the movie is “just fun,” like that isn’t enough. This is a Star Wars movie. This is a film series that started by following two droids around and watching what happens from wherever they happen to be. It’s about a farm boy who wants to be a fighter pilot, and then he becomes a Jedi warrior. This is a franchise where the third film made Ewoks a major part of the story.
However, starting with the prequels, the Star Wars fanbase has become quite insufferable in demanding that only their vision of the franchise be told. When the movies try to be fun, many fans who fell in love with this as children now want it to be super serious for them as adults. When the movie tries something fresh, they complain that it’s not like the old movies. Most of these fans don’t know what they want, other than the fact that they love to complain. If you are one of those fans, understand that I want my Star Wars movies to be fun first and foremost, and if it can bring something original, that is just icing on the cake.
This movie is a ton of fun, and that is where it succeeds. However, it doesn’t really bring anything new, and that is one of the downfalls of The Mandalorian & Grogu. The film seems like an overly long mission movie, with almost every single fight scene being the Mandalorian fighting aliens that look like monsters, or he’s shooting droids. The only fights that had him battling other humanoids were a bar fight and a clash with a fellow bounty hunter. The rest of the film felt like we were going through video game levels, and the battles got a little old after a while.
The story sees Din Djarin, the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal), and his foundling Grogu (Baby Yoda) hunting down Imperial war criminals. When he ends up killing his latest targets, he gets another job from a New Republic colonel named Ward (Sigourney Weaver). The target is a mysterious Imperial war criminal who no one has any photos of, named Coin. The only people who can point them in the right direction are the Hutt Twins, who need the Mandalorian to rescue their nephew, Rotta the Hutt, the son of the late Jabba the Hutt.
Rotta is from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where he appeared as a young baby, and now he is a grown adult, and the Mandalorian is asked to bring him back home in exchange for information about Coin. However, the Mandalorian soon learns that Rotta is paying off a debt, and he doesn’t want to go back home because the Hutt Twins plan to kill him to secure the throne. The rest of the movie sees the Mandalorian try to save Rotta and then face the consequences of his actions.
The two best parts of The Mandalorian & Grogu, by far, are Din Djarin’s relationship with Grogu and the portrayal of Rotta the Hutt, which was nothing like I expected it to be. Honestly, when Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) began talking as Rotta, it threw me off guard, and now I want to see Rotta back in more movies or streaming series ASAP. He was fantastic. As for Mando and Grogu, if you have never seen The Mandalorian on Disney+, you don’t need it to enjoy this movie. This film does a great job of showing how close Din is to the young Grogu. Their relationship carries the movie.
There are also some side characters known as Anzellans, and they are all voiced by Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies). These little creatures speak quickly, but it’s easy to understand them, and they are a riot, stealing every scene in which they appear. Sigourney Weaver has a small role, but it was a blast seeing her in the cockpit of an X-wing fighter, and she looked like she was having the time of her life. Add in a fun voice role for Martin Scorsese as Hugo Durant, and there are a lot of fun little things Star Wars fans can catch in the movie.
At the end of the day, The Mandalorian & Grogu is a very fun Star Wars movie. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 88% shows that most fans got what they wanted when they went in, and the film delivered on it. It is a little overlong at over 2 hours, and the movie could have used some trimming to make its pacing a bit better. Also, I have heard some critics comment that it feels like three or four episodes of the series, and I can see that. However, that can be forgiven for bringing fun back to the franchise that takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.