The Mandalorian and Grogu: A Review - This is NOT the Way

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A rather lifeless and listless addition to the Star Wars cinematic universe that you can wait to see when it hits Disney +.

The Mandalorian and Grogu, co-written and directed by Jon Favreau, is the first Star Wars film since 2019’s Rise of Skywalker and is a continuation of the popular Disney + television series created by Favreau, The Mandalorian.

Star Wars has been in a what could be described as a death spiral for quite some time. The sequel trilogy – The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), all made over a billion dollars each, but due to poor creative decisions – like the incessant princessification, that were disastrous for the franchise.

For the most part things did not get better when Disney transitioned the Star Wars franchise to their streaming platform Disney + with a series of shows that were catastrophically awful…once again a result of egregious princessification and dim-witted diversity initiatives. The Book of Boba Fett, Obi Wan Kenobi, Ashoka and The Acolyte are some of the worst series you will ever have the great misfortune to watch.

There were some bright spots in the Star Wars streaming universe though…namely the glorious Andor and The Mandalorian.

Favreau’s first season of The Mandalorian was such a refreshing breath of fresh air it jump started the franchise’s rebirth. It took the canon seriously, it took its subject seriously, and it was an entertaining bit of episodic drama. Essentially, season one of The Mandalorian brought Star Wars back to the barebones Western gunslinger genre from hence it was partially born.

Din Djarin aka The Mandalorian, was a masked man bounty hunter travelling the galaxy kicking ass…and that worked well…and it got even better when his gruff exterior was forced to deal with a cute little “baby Yoda” – Grogu. Grogu humanized Djarin and Djarin protected Grogu. A nicely designed, defined and executed drama by Favreau.

But…like so much else in the Star Wars universe…more specifically the corporate Star Wars universe, things went sideways pretty quick.

Season one of The Mandalorian was great. Season two…not so much. Season two wasn’t awful…it just wasn’t able to continue the creative momentum of season one. Then came season three. Yikes.

Season three of The Mandalorian, which came out in 2023, is garbage…just a big pile of poop.

Which brings us to The Mandalorian and Grogu.

First things first…if you haven’t watched The Mandalorian, you will be lost watching The Mandalorian and Grogu, so do your homework. I watched the series when it first came out and rewatched it with my young son to prepare for the film.

The film is…to put it mildly…underwhelming. It is poorly designed and poorly executed. It feels less like a movie and more like two long episodes of The Mandalorian crammed together and put on a big screen.

To give you an indication of how underwhelming this movie is…I have never fallen asleep in a movie…ever. Yet I nodded off three or four times during this movie – and I saw it in the middle of the day on a Sunday. There just wasn’t anything about it compelling at all.

This may explain why it now has the dubious distinction of having the lowest domestic box office haul for its first weekend of any Star Wars film in history. It still won the Memorial Day Weekend box office battle, but in less than impressive fashion.

The details of the film are almost beside the point. The plot essentially revolves around the Mandalorian and Grogu going out on their own with their bounty hunter business. They are loosely allied with the New Republic and are tasked with hunting down various Imperial villains (or as everyone’s favorite Sith Lord Dick Cheney and his sidekick Donald Rumsfeld would call them, “dead-enders”).

That’s the starting point, and it sounds good enough…but it isn’t. The Hutt crime family is heavily involved in the plot, and make for less than compelling villains…as does Imperial Commander Coin. All of it feels painfully perfunctory.

The film looks like the tv show…which isn’t a compliment. It is flat and dark with poor contrast. Even the action sequences, of which there are some, are quite dull and cookie-cutter. Everything about this cinematic exercise is instantly forgettable.

The cast, most of which are voice acting, is unremarkable in every way. For example, Martin Scorsese plays an Ardennian shopkeeper and Jeremy Allen White plays Rotta the Hutt, and neither distinguish themselves in the slightest.

Pedro Pascal once again plays the Mandalorian, and his voice fits fine with the character…but who really cares at this point?

The film is over long and struggles with pacing, which makes its two hour and twelve-minute run time feel like four hours and twenty-four-minutes.

I am not what anyone would describe as a Star Wars superfan. I do enjoy the franchise and the world building and all of that, but I’ve never gone crazy for it like some people I know.

That said, I do appreciate it and think the world is a much better place when Star Wars is good.

For example, Andor is not just the best Star Wars series ever made, it might be the best Star Wars anything ever made…and is definitely the best television series of this decade.

The Mandalorian could have been like that after its great first season…but it was too popular so it got infected by the Disney corporate bug and then went about destroying what made it appealing in the first place…that’s the Disney way.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is just a continuation of the destruction of both The Mandalorian in particular, and Star Wars in general. It isn’t offensively atrocious or anything, it is just relentlessly forgettable and fruitless.

Now, to be fair, my young son, who loved The Mandalorian series, enjoyed the movie. But unlike other Star Wars movies that we have watched together (we’ve watched every movie and all of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett together), he has not been talking non-stop about it since we saw it, which may be an indication that he was excited to see it but that excitement waned after watching.

The bottom line is that if you’re a Star Wars fan you’ll go see The Mandalorian and Grogu and you will probably feel as underwhelmed as I did despite the surge of excitement at a new Star Wars property being on the big screen.

If you are a middle of the road Star Wars fan, my recommendation to you is to just wait until the film streams on Disney +…because unfortunately it just isn’t worth going to see it in the theatre.

 ©2026

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - A Review: Born to Run in Place

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This bio-pic starts strong but finishes much too weakly to be a worthwhile venture. It could have, and should have, been significantly better.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, written and directed by Scott Cooper, is a bio-pic of sorts that chronicles both Bruce Springsteen’s struggle to make his critically-acclaimed 1982 album Nebraska and his battle with depression.

The film, which stars Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen, hit theatres on October 24, 2025 and is now available to stream on Hulu…which is where I watched it.

When I was growing up my first real introduction to Bruce Springsteen was his massively popular 1984 album Born in the USA. I was not fan of that song in particular, and the album in general…so much so that I wrote off Springsteen altogether. He seemed terribly uncool (something that was important to me as a young teen) and the jingoism of Born in the USA was repulsive to me on its face.

Then about a decade later a buddy of mine had an extra ticket to a Springsteen concert and gave it to me for free…and who am I to turn down a free concert ticket…so I went.

The concert was Springsteen without the E Street band and was part of the tour promoting his solo albums Human Touch and Lucky Town – two albums I didn’t think much of if I ever thought of them at all. Our seats were elevated and essentially behind the stage…which didn’t seem ideal….then Springsteen hit the stage.

It is a testament to Springsteen’s talent and skill that he turned a malevolent anti-fan like me into a big fan over the course of one concert. I understood by the end of that night what all the fuss was about regarding Springsteen…and why he was called The Boss.

Since then, I have essentially gone back and experienced his early albums for the first time, and even saw Born in the USA from a different perspective and liked it. It also helped hearing the stripped-down acoustic version of the song which is deliciously caustic in regards to its intentions.

After having spent the last three decades appreciating and absorbing The Boss’ work, I have come to the conclusion that he is one of the most essential American singer-songwriters of his era and maybe of any era.

Which brings us to Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.

This film is a bit of an odd duck, as the first half of it is as ambitious and audacious as any music bio-pic you’ll find, but the second half of it is so painfully trite and pedestrian it feels like an after-school special.

Let’s start with the good. The film’s first half deals with Springsteen fighting to keep his artistic integrity amidst pressure from his record label and struggling to make a stripped down, dark album that satiates his artistic urges.

Watching a film attempt to dramatize an iconic artists’ life by getting into his actual creative process and seeing what inspired him and propelled his work, is something that doesn’t fit nicely into the music bio-pic formula…and that’s what makes this choice so bold and brazen.

This is easily the best part of the film, as we see Springsteen research a murder in Nebraska that piques his interest and sparks his imagination and artistry. This is the less glamourous part of The Boss being The Boss. No fanfare, no nonsense, just him, his guitar, paper, pencil and long hours.

The album he eventually records at home on a four-track becomes his iconic work Nebraska…but he has to get the record label on board first, and maybe re-record in the studio…and this is when the film shifts.

The second half of the film is not about creation or artistry, it is about Springsteen dealing with his family, his fame, and his depression…all standard fare for a music bio-pic….and none of it is very compelling.

The decision to all of a sudden make the movie about Bruce’s struggle with depression is a bizarre creative choice as it scuttles any momentum and it feels entirely unearned. Also unearned is a romance with a local Jersey girl that feels random and lifeless.

The ending of the film has a written epilogue that is reminiscent of an after-school special where the viewer is informed that everything worked out for Bruce as he becomes a massive superstar and he essentially overcomes his depression with help from professionals. Yikes.

That epilogue reminded me of the textual epilogue at the end of Clint Eastwood’s 1988 film Bird – a biopic about jazz legend Charlie Parker that features a brilliant performance from Forest Whitaker. Bird is overall a pretty bad movie, and that is only accentuated by the epilogue which – in true Regan era sloganeering form, tells us that unlike the drug-addled Charlie Parker who died at 34, supporting-character “Red Rodney is actively performing today, providing an example of musical excellence and a drug-free life.” Thanks, Nancy Reagan.

Deliver Me from Nowhere didn’t need its textual epilogue…at all. It should have just let sleeping dogs lie but it couldn’t, probably because Bruce Springsteen had control of what could, and couldn’t be in the movie. That is unfortunate because when it happens the much-needed hard edges of drama and artistry get softened and rounded.

Jeremy Allen White does a decent enough job as Springsteen throughout. He is hamstrung by the script which in the second half is a bit too melo-dramatic than it should be.

I’ve not watched White’s popular series The Bear, but I can see why he is as popular as he is because he has a screen presence that is appealing and a certain magnetism that serves him well. I thought overall his work as Springsteen was not spectacular but, ironically, workman like.

Jeremy Strong plays Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau – who is a legend in the music industry. Strong is a very good actor, but he isn’t given much to do in this role. He, like White…is just fine in the role but not great.

The biggest takeaway I had from the performances of both White and Strong was that this movie had the opportunity to be great…but it never coalesced into what it could have, and maybe should have, been.

A lot of the blame for the film’s failing lies with writer/director Scott Cooper. Cooper has had a strange career. His first film was Crazy Heart (2009), which won Jeff Bridges his best Actor Oscar. Pretty impressive. His next film was Out of the Furnace (2013) – which despite a stacked cast bombed at the box office and was critically forgotten.

In 2015 Cooper delivered the film Black Mass, about the life and times of Whitey Bulger, and while I like that film, it underperformed and underwhelmed. Since then, he’s made Hostiles (2017), Antlers (2021) and The Pale Blue Eye (2022), none of which made much of a dent in the culture despite their top-notch casts.

Cooper’s biggest issue with Deliver Me from Nowhere is that he doesn’t commit to the arthouse version of the film where it is just about Springsteen trying to write and record Nebraska. Trying to round out that story with flaccid familial drama and cookie-cutter mental health stuff feels like an attempt to make the movie more commercially viable…which ironically is what I think made it less commercially viable.

Speaking of which, Deliver Me from Nowhere did not do well at the box office, making $45 million on a $55 million budget. It also did not receive any award nominations or critical praise…which pretty much is in line with what happened to the rest of Scott Cooper’s filmography.

Ultimately, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a harmless and pretty forgettable movie which has moments of artistic insight that if further pursued could have led to brilliance….but t’was not to be.

I’d also like to say one thing about Springsteen himself. I think you’d be much better served going back and listening to his entire discography, including the outtakes and live material, than watching this movie. I also think you’d be better served watching his Broadway one man show, Springsteen on Broadway, on Netflix, and reading his autobiography Born to Run…both of which are excellent.

One final matter regarding the The Boss that I feel needs be said, and it’s this. Bruce Springsteen is an icon and avatar for the working class in this country, the white working class in particular…despite by his own admission, having never had a real job in his entire life.

What bothers me about Springsteen nowadays is that he has more money than he’ll ever know what to do with….and his kids, his grandkids, and all the way to his great-great-great grandkids, will never have to work a day in their lives if they don’t want to. And yet…Springsteen charges the most exorbitant and outrageous prices for his concert tickets…essentially forcing his hard-working fans to either shell out a huge chunk of their savings/credit or miss out on seeing their blue-collar savior.

This bothers me no end. It bothers me because I want to believe that Bruce Springsteen is the real deal…that he gets it and gets working class people and understands the struggle. But then he gets greedy, and reveals himself to be just another pompous, self-serving, boomer shit-lib prick who is only playing the working-class thing as a shtick to separate fools from their money – (consider me among the fools).

I feel the same about another band of greedy boomer shit-libs, U2, who have forever and ever been preaching about their political and spiritual righteousness in one form or another, and lots of people…like me for instance…have fallen for it. U2 are calculated con-men playing the role of concerned citizens. They don’t believe in anything but their own fame and fortune. This is why they spoke out about South African apartheid in the 1980s, but refused to pick sides in the struggle in Northern Ireland (only waving a white flag)…because one of the sides in that struggle was the largest market they needed to break in to…England. They couldn’t make a moral and ethical stand over civil rights for Catholics in Northern Ireland because that would alienate the audience they needed...but it cost U2 nothing to make a stand regarding South Africa. This is also why U2 refused to speak out against apartheid Israel and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank…they wouldn’t dare stand up to the powerful Zionist moneyed interests in Israel and the U.S. Nevermind the bands use of tax havens while demanding working Americans and the Irish pay for their foreign policy moral preening projects.

Now that the scales have fallen from my eyes, I see U2 and Bono and The Boss not just as bullshit artists but genuinely malignant and nefarious actors in the public sphere. That’s not to say that their music sucks and to discard all of the things they’ve created…it’s just to say that it’s difficult to take what they say – be it in the world or in their music, at face value once you’ve seen who they really are behind the mask.

The truth is that this entire topic is worthy of a much deeper conversation, but that conversation is for another day, but I thought I’d just throw these thoughts out there as a little appetizer.

As for Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere…if you are a Springsteen fan you will probably watch it regardless of what I say, and you’ll probably be a bit underwhelmed by it just like me. If you’re not a Springsteen fan, the reality is that you really have no need to watch this movie at all.

©2026