'The Mandalorian and Grogu' review: Nostalgia is strong with this one

Nearly 50 years after “Star Wars” and the launch of a media empire (big or small “e”? You decide), fandom has become its own galaxy of warring planets. But based on the success of the streaming series “The Mandalorian,” centered on the bounty hunter of the title, we can all agree that its handler Grogu (Baby You-Know-Who, green, wrinkled and with big eyes) is still adorable. Of the many versions of “Star Wars,” this one seems to be the strongest.

The brand is back together for “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which is a movie, a long-awaited revival of the franchise, a fourth season of sorts, and a good-natured throwback. But it's never fascinating enough as canon or material to supplant anyone's memories. [insert favorite “Star Wars” film here].

The expectation game was never going to help series creator Jon Favreau's big-screen version, written with Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor. Of course, this improved and pleasantly varied treatment of an adventure story that wouldn't have been out of place on the show could have tried harder. Especially when it puts sci-fi icon Sigourney Weaver in an X-wing pilot uniform as a Rebellion veteran, but barely gives her anything to do besides secure Mando a job and track his progress. (Gang, try harder. It's Sigourney Weaver.)

Aimed squarely at kids of all sizes, “Star Wars” has become a glorified tour of a billionaire’s sprawling gaming world, and “The Mandalorian and Grogu” wants the track to be well-oiled, not bumpy. The simple pleasures here of good versus evil, the immensity of IMAX, and composer Ludwig Göransson's space opera score, are easy enough to understand not to be irritating. It's a lot.

But it is not this reviewer's position to tell you what “a lot” is: loose lips ruin scripts. When the appropriately perilous moment arrives for our heroes, we feel the kind of things that only movies can do well when they're large-scale myths: slow things down, shift the impulse away from the tyranny of exposition, and let emotion, humor, wonder, and character coexist. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” takes the thematic underpinnings of the series (what parenting looks like between a lonely masked human and a young child from another world) and deepens them.

The film takes place in wonderfully detailed environments that evoke the beloved films that came before it. However, they are not spoiling you; the reward is a lovely echo. Elsewhere, Favreau deftly handles the action scenes. (One of them sounds, above all, like an homage to “The French Connection”).

Otherwise, this is another hunt-and-recapture 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 curious about the New Republic, Weaver's Colonel Ward tasks Mando with finding a wayward descendant of the slimy Hutt gangster clan, Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), whose return will unlock important information. Of course, things don't go as planned, which is interesting for a while: are the Hutts like the Corleones, perhaps? – until it isn't, because then the dialogue would have to rise above the level of a high school play.

That said, one of the film's strengths, minus the story's shortcomings, is that, through its many wordless scenes, it is at heart a solidly moving and deliciously disgusting creature feature, in the vein of a supercharged ensemble from Ray Harryhausen and Guillermo del Toro. “It's a tough world for the little things,” says Lillian Gish in “The Night of the Hunter,” a film no one will ever confuse with “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” But we all know that a summer meal like this is as enjoyable as the monsters conjured to conquer.