The first theatrical Star Wars release since The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian and Grogu offers up a fun but slight adventure that doesn’t really do much to justify why it couldn’t have just stayed on Disney+.
Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his apprentice Grogu are working for the New Republic, tracking down and either capturing or killing Imperial warlords who are looking to rebuild the Empire. On the trail of a particularly elusive target, the only intel comes from the Hutt Twins, Jabba’s siblings, who demand the return of their nephew Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White) before they will reveal what they know. The movie’s plot is completely standalone, with none of the Mandalore/Dark Saber/Bo-Katan storyline set up in the last season of The Mandalorian, and it actually feels more like Season 1, when things were a bit more episodic. Mando and Grogu journey to several planets, including Shakari, home to gladiator battles, and the Hutts’ home of Nal Hutta, but there isn’t anything particularly cool or mind-blowing as far as the locales or the creatures the pair encounter. There is also basically no new character development or arc for either Mando or Grogu. Grogu does get a large chunk of the movie by himself, where he gets to do more than look adorable and make baby noises, which is a cute change of pace from the rest of the movie, even if it veers close to Minions territory with the inclusion of a quartet of goofy Anzellans. It all feels designed to really cater to new viewers or people who tapped out early in The Mandalorian who know the basic premise, and anyone invested in the ongoing storyline and lore will probably be pretty disappointed.
Pedro Pascal still does a great job voicing Mando, but he’s not really doing anything new, and in many cases, he’s just playing the greatest hits of catchphrases. Jeremy Allen White brings surprising depth to Rotta, a jacked Hutt who fights in gladiator battles but is actually pretty sensitive and introspective. He reminded me quite a bit of the performance of his The Bear co-star Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s portrayal of Ben Grimm in last year’s Fantastic Four: First Steps.  Sigourney Weaver doesn’t really have a lot to do as Ward, the leader of the Adelphi Ranger and Mando’s New Republic contractor but hopefully she had fun meeting Grogu and piloting an X-Wing. Steve Blum is definitely one of the standouts, reprising his role as Zeb from Star Wars Rebels, and I was pleasantly surprised that he’s a major character throughout the first half of the movie and not just a random cameo. Hopefully, he’ll be able to reunite with his Rebels cohorts in Ahsoka in the near future.
The Mandalorian and Grogu starts extremely strong with a pretty awsome opening set piece as the pair take out one of their Imperial targets on a snowy planet, which features some cool moves from Mando but I found a lot of the movie’s action to be kind of choppy and muddy due to the darker lighting of many of the movie’s settings, making it hard to see what was even happening at times. One thing that elevates everything, though, is the score, with Ludwig Göransson killing it yet again. In addition to the fantastic The Mandalorian theme, there are plenty of great new tracks, with several leaning heavily into synthwave, and much of it is like nothing we’ve heard before in Star Wars.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is an enjoyable adventure, but there’s nothing about it that makes it a must-watch in theaters, and it doesn’t do anything to advance the show’s storyline or characters. If you have Disney+, you can probably wait until it starts streaming and get pretty much the same experience.
