Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

The Force isn’t with the Kid-Friendly Mandalorian and Grogu

While watching Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first theatrical Star Wars adventure since 2019’s misbegotten The Rise of Skywalker, I tried to put myself back in my 1977 kiddie shoes. It was immediately clear to me that director and cowriter Jon Favreau intended his film — a feature-length sequel to the Emmy-winning Disney+ television show The Mandalorian — to be something children were going to enjoy far more than their parents. It skews very young, keeps the plotting simplistic, and fills the screen with goofy and colorful images. To paraphrase the main character’s catchphrase, this is the way (the director chooses to do things).

The problem? While George Lucas was also inspired by matinee serials, Hollywood westerns, and Akira Kurosawa samurai adventures, his Star Wars still told a sturdy, character-driven story that established an intriguing mythology that captured the imaginations of viewers of every age all over the world. Favreau’s tale, while drawing from the same genres (and even expanding to include 1990s Hong Kong action flicks, anime, and film noir), shows precious little ambition. It is content to be pleasantly diverting and little more, playing it so safe that finding a memorable moment in its 131 leisurely paced minutes is extremely difficult.

Not that there aren’t several laudatory elements, most notably the film’s creative use of puppetry, stop-motion, animatronics, and practical makeup effects. In fact, there’s an entire section in which, for reasons best not discussed in any detail, young Grogu is suddenly on his own on a strange, swamp-covered planet, forced to care for the unconscious body of his bounty-hunter caregiver Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), aka The Mandalorian or Mando. It’s an almost dialogue-free 30 minutes, in which the pint-sized creature builds a mud hut to hide in, explores the world for resources, and tries to figure out why his adoptive father is ailing and what he needs to do to save him.

While the location is eerily similar to Dagobah, the secluded world where Luke Skywalker first encountered Master Yoda long ago in The Empire Strikes Back, this is the once piece of The Mandalorian and Grogu in which bursts of nostalgia and purposeful callbacks to the original trilogy feel entirely story-driven and not inserted just because the filmmakers can. The sequence gives Grogu agency, granting him the opportunity to be his own character in a way the television show never did. It’s like the Star Wars version of the opening desert-island section of The Black Stallion, and it’s kind of glorious.

You may notice I haven’t talked much about the actual plot. That’s because there isn’t much of one. Basically, Mando and his pint-sized green sidekick now work for the New Republic, going after former Imperial Galactic Empire leaders. Their latest task, given to them by their boss Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), is to find a faceless, high-ranking Imperial baddie that only the late Jabba the Hutt’s siblings know the location of. But the latter want their abducted nephew Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White) returned to them before they’ll reveal the man’s location, and the veteran bounty hunter doesn’t trust either Hutt to maintain their part of the bargain if he follows through on their request.

This leads to a journey to a gambling planet run by a smug mafioso named Lord Janu (Jonny Coyne) and the discovery of an athletic Rotta battling away in a gladiatorial arena to erase a debt. It’s also an excuse for Favreau to get goofy and bring the 3-D chess creatures (from the match Chewbacca and R2D2 were playing in the original feature) to vivid life in front of a cheering, bloodthirsty throng. An amusing callback in and of itself, but sadly nothing noteworthy is done with the idea — just a bunch of digital monsters whaling on one another, with Mando and Rotta right in the middle of it all, making the whole bit something of a video game-style battle royale that’s nowhere near as fun to watch as it sounds.

Things progress exactly as expected from there. Because of this, The Mandalorian and Grogu never escapes its TV roots. Each “act” plays like an episode of the show, making this enterprise more like season four of The Mandalorian than a feature film. You can even see where the opening and closing credits might go. This gives events an episodic quality that erases forward momentum and stifles any attempt to build, let alone maintain, tension. That’s a pretty big problem.

Thankfully, Favreau is a talented filmmaker. As forgettable as all of this may be, he still stages some winning sequences and, as mentioned, ends up utilizing so many classic techniques (the Grogu puppet is magnificent, as is a stop-motion battle between Mando and a pair of hulking battle droids) that the result is worthy of a modest cheer. His attempt at making a Star Wars isn’t a disaster.

But it also is no Iron Man or The Jungle Book. Even if this expedition into a galaxy far, far away set a long time ago isn’t dreadful (The Rise of Skywalker still holds the crown), there’s so little of merit that it’s almost as if this foray barely exists. The film is like this hazy dream that has blips and jolts of images and ideas that could prove substantive if they weren’t so nondescript or nebulous.

And yet, I do think kids will enjoy themselves, and maybe that’s enough to give this middling adventure a pass. Even so, the Force is not with The Mandalorian and Grogu. In fact, I seriously doubt this is the Star Wars adventure most are looking for. Move along.

– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle

Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)