REVIEW: 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' goes back to basics—for better or worse
Conceived by filmmaker Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef), The Mandalorian TV series was inspired by the iconic Lone Wolf and Cub manga and films, with a brooding loner trying to survive in a brutal landscape with his infant companion in tow. As the titular bounty hunter, a bevy of stuntmen and Pedro Pascal (Fantastic Four) drew from Clint Eastwood’s signature Man with No Name character (from Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy), while Baby Yoda (whose name was later revealed to be the somewhat less-catchy, “Grogu”) was realized through an expert blend of animatronic puppetry and CGI.
Over the course of two brilliant seasons, The Mandalorian and Grogu would take on small-scale adventures and side quests in a way that made Star Wars feel fresh and exciting again, successfully proving that not everything had to be about space wizards in a galactic civil war. Even when Season 3 succumbed to the bloat and nostalgia-baiting that befell the rest of the franchise (the less said about Lizzo, Jack Black, and/or The Book of Boba Fett, the better), the audience’s love for Mando and his snack-loving ward endured, largely intact.
Three years later, we have The Mandalorian and Grogu, a big-screen adventure with series creator Favreau himself at the helm. Being the first Star Wars film since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, to say that there’s a lot riding on this film would be something of an understatement.
The story picks up with Mando and Grogu on a routine job to apprehend an Imperial warlord on behalf of the New Republic, represented here by the ever-resplendent Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Ghostbusters) as Col. Ward. When the job goes sideways, Ward dispatches the duo to find and retrieve Jabba the Hutt’s son, Rotta (Jeremy Allen White, The Bear), in exchange for information on another Imperial holdout. When that mission goes disastrously wrong, the Mandalorian will be separated from Grogu, his weapons, and any hope of back-up. Now, with bloodthirsty Hutts hungry for vengeance, and a whole planet out to kill him, Mando will find himself tested in a desperate battle for survival.
Seeing the film felt like bingeing a season of the show in all the best ways, but that would be a bit of a backhanded compliment, seeing as there’s no inherently compelling reason for it to have been a theatrical release in the first place. This isn’t to say it’s a bad movie—because it honestly isn’t—as it does an excellent job of stripping away the excesses that marred Season 3 while reminding us why we loved these characters in the first place.
For better or worse, the latter is an assignment the film takes a bit too literally, as the recipe will be eminently familiar to anyone who’s seen the show, with Mando begrudgingly accepting a contract, learning that things aren’t what they seem, going on a side quest(s), and getting captured, all before eventually escaping/saving the day in spectacular fashion with unexpected allies. Pepper in a few cute father-son moments, colorful side character(s), brilliant visuals from Industrial Light and Magic, then marinate across eight episodes or so. In this case, it’s a bit over two hours, but you get the idea.
Now, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the franchise leaning on its current hottest asset to drum up box office buzz before Ryan Gosling’s Starfighter takes flight in 2027, but surely there was something more interesting that they could have gone with? Pascal is solid as always, but seeing as his schedule barely allows him to do more than voice the character on most days, it would have been nice if Favreau and Dave Filoni (current Star Wars head honcho) had come up with, well, any other reason to be here.
Inasmuch as Pascal and his diminutive charge go through the motions here, award-winning actor Jeremy Allen White knocks it out of the park as Rotta, delivering unexpected pathos as the slimy son of a space slug. Originally introduced as a wide-eyed infant in the 2009 animated Clone Wars film, White’s grown-up incarnation is a broad-chested brawler, with biceps and an attitude to match. Despite being completely CGI, Rotta’s interactions with Grogu make for some of the film’s most human and heartwarming, as the former Huttlett finds in the child a kindred spirit, while recognizing that the bond he shares with the Mandalorian is one he never had with his own infamous father. It’s unknown as of this writing if Rotta will appear in a hypothetical Mandalorian Season 4, but the fact that White, Favreau, and Feloni managed to make a Hutt sympathetic at all is worthy of praise in and of itself.
As expected, the visuals here are best-in-class, with the Lucas-founded Industrial Light & Magic (Jurassic Park, Project Hail Mary, Avengers Endgame), putting in another top-flight job, combining live action photography with all of the computer-generated imagery, animatronics, model work, and puppetry needed to bring Star Wars to life. ILM’s work takes up more of the spotlight than usual during a series of extended, largely wordless sequences that see Grogu caring for an incapacitated Mando. Set in a swampy forest on an inhospitable alien world, the silent interlude was reminiscent of the first 40 minutes of Wall-E (2008), with the tiny creature sticking to his mission against all odds.
While most will probably have heard about director Martin Scorsese's (Goodfellas, Gangs of New York) cameo, it’s not the only one in the movie. At the same time, Favreau and Filoni have littered the film with their trademark Easter Eggs honoring classic lore, such as a key action sequence patterned after the Millennium Falcon’s iconic gaming table (“Dejarik”, to be precise), a budget-conscious Kenner toy appearing for the first time in live action, and a glorified extra from Jabba’s palace being promoted to the level of actual threat (all hail the gloriously-monickered, “Amanaman”). There’s even a couple of towering, stop-motion robots that would look right at home in Robocop 2, animated by no less than ILM legend Phil Tippet himself. No prior knowledge is needed to enjoy the film, of course, but longtime fans will probably have fun calling these things out.
All told, The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fine movie, even if it seemingly only exists to reset the board for these characters with a safe, low-stakes adventure that harkens back to their (streaming) glory days. However, if Disney is hoping to bring fans back for any sort of sequel (or even a hypothetical fourth season), the filmmakers will need to do something that Star Wars hasn’t always been good at: Come up with something new.
To paraphrase a beloved space princess: Help us, Favreau and Feloni. You’re our only hope.
Disclaimer: PhilSTAR L!fe was invited to the special advance screening of The Mandalorian and Grogu. The film opens in regular and IMAX cinemas on May 21. Watch the trailer below.
