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.

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