{"id":323469,"date":"2026-05-19T21:39:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323469\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:39:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:39:23","slug":"the-mandalorian-and-grogu-review-the-nostalgia-is-strong-with-this-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/323469\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ review: The nostalgia is strong with this one"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly 50 years on from \u201cStar Wars\u201d and the launch of a media empire (large or small \u201ce\u201d? You decide), the fandom has become its own galaxy of warring planets. But based on the success of the streaming series \u201cThe Mandalorian,\u201d<\/a> set around the title bounty hunter, we can all agree that his charge Grogu \u2014 green, wrinkled, big-eyed Baby You-Know-Who \u2014 is still adorable. Of the many \u201cStar Wars\u201d offshoots, this seems to be the sturdiest.<\/p>\n

The brand is back together for \u201cThe Mandalorian and Grogu,\u201d which is a movie, a hoped-for franchise revival, a fourth season of sorts and an affable throwback. But it\u2019s never quite riveting enough as canon or fodder to supplant anyone\u2019s memories of [insert favorite \u201cStar Wars\u201d film here].<\/p>\n

The expectations game was never going to help series creator Jon Favreau\u2019s big-screen version, written with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor. Granted, this upscaled, agreeably rangy treatment of an adventure storyline that wouldn\u2019t have been out of place on the show could have attempted more. Especially when it puts sci-fi icon Sigourney Weaver in an X-wing pilot uniform as a veteran of the Rebellion, but barely gives her anything to do besides secure Mando a job and keep tabs on his progress. (Gang, try harder. It\u2019s Sigourney Weaver.)<\/p>\n

Aimed squarely at kids of all sizes, \u201cStar Wars\u201d has become a glorified tour of a billionaire\u2019s expanding playworld and \u201cThe Mandalorian and Grogu\u201d wants the track well-oiled, not bumpy. The simple pleasures here of good vs evil, IMAX hugeness and composer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson<\/a>\u2019s space-opera-hits-the-club score, go down easy enough to not be aggravating. It\u2019s a lot.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not this reviewer\u2019s position to tell you what \u201ca lot\u201d is \u2014 loose lips spoil scripts. When the moment comes at an appropriately dangerous time for our heroes, we sense the kind of thing that only movies can do well when they\u2019re myths writ large: slow things down, shift momentum away from the tyranny of exposition and let emotion, humor, wonder and character co-exist. \u201cThe Mandalorian and Grogu\u201d takes the series\u2019 thematic underpinnings \u2014 what parenting looks like between a masked human loner and an otherworldly toddler \u2014 and deepens them.<\/p>\n

The movie takes place in wonderfully detailed environments that evoke the earlier, beloved films. You\u2019re not being pandered to, however; the payoff is a lovely echo. Elsewhere, the action set pieces are serviceably handled by Favreau. (One of them plays like, of all things, an homage to \u201cThe French Connection.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Otherwise, this is another hunt-and-retrieve narrative for the bounty hunter voiced by Pedro Pascal, physically embodied in armor by Brendan Wayne and, in combat, by fight choreographer Lateef Crowder. Still independent but New Republic-curious, Mando is tasked by Weaver\u2019s Col. Ward to find a wayward scion of the slimy gangster Hutt clan, Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White<\/a>), whose return will unlock some important information. Of course, things don\u2019t go as planned, which for a while is interesting \u2014 are the Hutts like the Corleones, perhaps? \u2014 until it\u2019s not, because then the dialogue would need to rise above the level of a middle-school play.<\/p>\n

That being said, one of the movie\u2019s strong points, absent its story deficiencies, is that, across its many wordless scenes, it\u2019s at heart a solidly rousing, delightfully icky creature feature, in the vein of a supercharged Ray Harryhausen-meets-Guillermo del Toro joint. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard world for little things,\u201d Lillian Gish famously says in \u201cThe Night of the Hunter,\u201d a movie nobody will ever confuse with \u201cThe Mandalorian and Grogu.\u201d But we all know summer fare like this is only ever as enjoyable as the monsters conjured up for conquering.<\/p>\n

‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’<\/p>\n

In English and Huttese, with subtitles<\/p>\n

Rated: PG-13, for sci-fi violence and action<\/p>\n

Running time: 2 hours, 12 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: Opens Friday, May 22 in wide release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 50 years on from \u201cStar Wars\u201d and the launch of a media empire (large or small \u201ce\u201d?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6193,134737,1924,68307,48,52,51,47,50,49,1741,132421,134734,4287,1410,15060,134735,1925,128117,4610,134736],"class_list":["post-323469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-character","tag-col","tag-film","tag-grogu","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lot","tag-mandalorian","tag-mando","tag-movie","tag-place","tag-review","tag-sci-fi-icon-sigourney-weaver","tag-star-wars","tag-streaming-series","tag-thing","tag-title-bounty-hunter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}