Mandalorian and Grogu a non spoiler review

[Barry]

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, a non spoiler revue

I am not really a big fan of Star Wars. I thoroughly enjoyed the first three movies. But i have not been thrilled by what followed.  I have only seen a couple of episodes the Mandalorian.

I went to my local AMC theater with a few friends to see it. We paid about $12 each and got to see it on a big screen with Dolby Atmos sound. There were about five other people at the theater for this Tuesday afternoon show.

On one hand, I would like to suspend our normal ratings of great, good bad, etc.. if anything this movie was a “fun” movie. It really seemed like it was two episodes of the TV show stitch together.  I know this is a non-spoiler review, but it would be hard to spoil the plot of a movie that doesn’t have much of a plot. The first hour is a lot of fighting followed by a lot of chasing. The second hour is a lot of chasing followed  by a lot of fighting.


The special effects were really fantastic and it’s hard to believe but anything you can think of now can be put on screen. The movie did remind me of the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. A lot of fighting, a lot of chasing, but you knew the good guy was going to win. Now you’ve got to believe this., as soon as the movie was over, a friend said to me , “ this looks like a movie by Ray Harryhausen.” 

Scourney Weaver has a role in this movie. But it looks like she filmed it all in a day or two. Virtually all of her dialogue is shot and close-up with very little interaction with anything around her.

I know that this is a no spoiler review, but it really isn’t much of a plot here to spoil. If you like the TV series, and if you like Star Wars, you’ll probably like this movie. For me it was just OK and a lot of fun in certain parts, but there is nothing here that would make me wanna go back and see it again.  When the movie is released on disk, we can discuss the plotting or lack of it further which I won’t do it a non-spoiler review.

[bmoney]

I LOVE Star Wars.  The original three films. I have Star Wars fatigue. Have no desire to watch this. Prob will with my son. But…

[HomeTheaterGuy]

Sounds like a fun "popcorn" movie. I'll probably see it when it comes to streaming.

[SRW1000]

Barry, your review matches up with almost every one that I've seen so far.  It's not bad, but feels like a number of episodes thrown together.  Which makes sense, since they halted production on season four and likely reworked a number of those scripts into a movie.

The general suggestion seems to be to wait until it hits Disney+, which should be in a month or two.

[David Vaughn]

The general suggestion seems to be to wait until it hits Disney+, which should be in a month or two.

I offered to take my wife to see it and she looked and me with "that look" and said we will wait to stream it. She'd rather go and see "Pressure" and/or "Disclosure Day." This will be the first Star Wars movie that I've skipped in the theaters and I don't have one ounce of regret. 

[Paul Heroy]

Yeah, my buddy who saw it gave it a 2 out of 5, and he's seen the series. Definitely a wait for streaming, unfortunately.

[SRW1000]

My wife and I got the 4K UHD disc from the library and watched it last night.  We were both bored. 

They banked heavily on pleasing the fans of baby Grogu, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed.  My wife is the prime target for that audience, but as soon as he appeared on screen and made his cute little gurgling/cooing sounds, she let out a depressed sigh.  His antics are a big part of the movie, and the charm wears off quickly.  Not to mention that his use of the force comes and goes at the most opportune times.  There are also a lot of other plot inconsistencies that one has to be generous to overlook.

I really liked the first two seasons of the TV show and hoped that strip mining the best parts of a fourth season would make for a good movie, but there's still a lot of filler and it could easily have been trimmed down to under two hours without losing anything of importance.  There's plenty of fighting action, but even that is uninspired when compared to what we see in a John Wick film, for example.

I'll mention three positives.  First, unlike the recent releases from Disney, it doesn't sound like they've reduced the bass at all for this disc, with plenty of subwoofer action.  Secondly, the overall production design looks better than some of what we've seen lately out of Disney's Star Wars.  There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's more interesting that what we've come to expect.

Thirdly, Barry mentioned the feel of a Harryhausen film.  This is due to the work by Tippett Studios, who used good old stop motion for one of the sequences.  Tippet's work goes back all the way to the original Star Wars, where he animated the creatures on the chessboard which also make an appearance in this movie.  Sadly, it was recently announced that his studio has filed for bankruptcy and many of his Star Wars items have been auctioned off.  It's a sad end for the Oscar winning special effects guy who has worked on all kinds of blockbusters over the years.

For those interested in his work, check out my review of Mad God.  It's filled with stop motion animation, but unrelentingly dark and depressing.  It's worth viewing for the imaginative work involved, despite the relative crudeness.  It's not a movie for children, though.

And here's a good retrospective of his work, including mentions of Harryhausen: