Critics finally have their chance to weigh in on The Mandalorian and Grogu.
The official review embargo was lifted Tuesday morning on Disney‘s first Star Wars film in seven years.
The verdict? The first batch of reviews are decidedly split on the Jon Favreau film. Several reviewers praise the Disney+ show’s big-screen debut as a fun, stand-alone adventure that benefits from Pedro Pascal’s laconic delivery as the helmeted bounty hunter, the cuteness of Grogu, and a dynamic score by composer Ludwig Göransson. The film’s snowy opening sequence — which has been shown in advance for fans at special screenings — is cited as a particular high point.
Yet other critics slam the film as unworthy of the iconic franchise, accusing the movie of having low stakes, uninteresting supporting characters (including Jeremy Allen White’s Rotta the Hutt and Sigourney Weaver’s Colonel Ward) and tiresome CG-addled action sequences. While the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is still being tabulated, the film currently sits at 66 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The film opens May 22.
Below is a rundown of some of the most interesting critic quotes from various outlets.
The Hollywood Reporter: “Just good enough to make you wish it were better … The scale has certainly been pumped up, with an obviously bigger budget, spectacular action sequences and a significant portion projected in full IMAX-level proportions. It looks, sounds and feels like a Star Wars movie. And yet, it still feels stubbornly small in its relatively inconsequential storyline and themes. It’s hard to imagine anyone experiencing this as their first Star Wars film and getting hooked for life as those who saw the original trilogy in theaters did … mostly fulfills its goal of being better than the much-maligned The Rise of Skywalker and giving its titular characters a viable launch on the big screen.”
The Wrap: “It’s a deft and enjoyable blockbuster, easily the most purely entertaining Star Wars movie since the 1980s, even though it’s hardly the most meaningful or ambitious … The Mandalorian and Grogu is an absorbing, classy summer blockbuster. Entertaining from start to finish, with so much heart that it never feels shallow. It’s straightforward, certainly, but never shallow. We can quibble about the film’s subpar villains — one of them is literally just “Telly Savalas in Space” — but this is a film about appealing heroes, not charismatic bad guys. Screw the bad guys. Evil isn’t cool. A doting father and his wacky puppet son are cool. And while their TV series is hit-and-miss, their movie is a bountiful success.”
SlashFilm: “In its desperate attempt to satisfy everyone, The Mandalorian and Grogu neglects to tell a meaningful tale worth anyone’s time. Instead of the pulpy, thrill-a-minute adventure that was promised, Star Wars has never felt duller or more mundane … This collaboration never once aspires to aim for anything more challenging or cinematic, instead coasting on endless interludes of Grogu being cutesy or Mando fighting off hordes of overmatched Stormtroopers and creepy critters while being the baddest badass to ever badass … Say what you will about your least favorite Episode movies, but at least they were always events … There have been worse movies before and there will inevitably be worse ones to come. This sure feels like the most boring, though — one whose philosophy seems to be that you can’t swing and miss if you never bother taking the bat off your shoulders.”
USA Today: “It’s an enjoyable throwback romp with plenty of action and weird creatures to overcome its weaknesses … The Mandalorian and Grogu embraces the bizarre and the adorable alike to create a “Star Wars” outing that at times harkens back to more glorious past efforts. In a franchise that seems to be readjusting, Mando and Grogu offer up some snackies and a new hope.”
Gizmodo: “It’s big, beautiful, has a few laughs, great action, and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. By all measures, with those stakes, it’s a success … [but] The Mandalorian and Grogu is a throwaway adventure in the lives of these characters. A blip. A side quest. It doesn’t add anything of true significance to Star Wars as a whole or, more importantly, to the lore of the Mandalorian and Grogu as charactersThe Mandalorian and Grogu is ultimately nothing more than a longer, better-looking, mid-tier episode of the show. Some will find it passable, but Star Wars deserves better. This is not the way.”
Empire: “Time and time again, Mando is forced to fight reams of CGI aliens where the stakes rarely rise above, ‘How is Mando going to get out of this pickle?’ … Oddly, it feels like the least consequential Mandalorian chapter yet, with previous episodes from the TV incarnation — or even segments of the much-maligned Book Of Boba Fett — having more impact on the narrative. It’s thinner than skimmed blue milk … The Mandalorian and Grogu is, primarily, For Kids, as George Lucas always insisted Star Wars was, and on those modest terms, it finds the way.”
Vulture: “Drab and stone-faced to a fault, The Mandalorian and Grogu struggles to capture the inventive vitality of the better Star Wars movies with action scenes that feel frustratingly pro forma and lifeless performances that seem determined to lull us to sleep … The Mandalorian basically marches through these sequences, somehow entering highly fortified locations without meaningful resistance and dispatching all his adversaries cleanly and quickly. Again, without a face or sharp enough dialogue to muster any urgency — without any real sense of danger or rage or desperation or … or … really, anything — it’s hard to care one way or the other.”
GamesRadar: “Taken as a standalone adventure story, there’s a lot to like here, mostly thanks to the charisma of Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and the sheer adorableness of Grogu. There’s no denying that these two are an on-screen pairing for the ages and one of the best creations to emerge from the widening of the Star Wars universe … While the movie has a lot of fun as a simple adventure story, the problem is: this is Star Wars, and it can’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, it’s quite surprising how standalone this story is for a property that casually brought back Luke Skywalker. It’s extremely uninterested in the wider galaxy going on around it, and the stakes feel pretty low as a result.”
Mashable: “The film is still a slog: an unwieldy adventure full of illegible action and the creeping sense of dread that we’ve seen this all before. Not even Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu’s sweet bond can Force lift it to success … If the thought of The Bear‘s White voicing a Hutt excited you, I’d advise you to lower your expectations. His voice is nearly unrecognizable, and his performance oddly flat. The dialogue he’s saddled with does him no favors.”
IndieWire: “Star Wars at its most generic …Inessential and inoffensive, frequently adorable and fun for the whole family, Jon Favreau’s film feels like three good-enough TV episodes smushed together. If that sounds pleasing to you as a movie-goer and a Star Wars fan, The Mandalorian and Grogu will satisfy. But if you’re hoping for something a bit more ambitious, the film’s generic soul will likely just keep chipping away at the franchise’s up-and-down goodwill …Much is lost with the film’s (hell, the franchise’s) reliance on CGI, which renders most non-Mando beings a little lifeless (Grogu remains exceedingly puppet-y, which works as often as it does not, he’s lucky he’s so damn cute) … It feels disposable. It feels like, well, what most things feel like these days: content. It’s time to ask for more. That is The Way.”
The Independent: “The Mandalorian and Grogu merely stitches together what is clearly three episodes of the previously planned fourth season of The Mandalorian and calls it a day. There’s not a whiff of effort here. As a mid-season arc for the character of ‘Pedro Pascal’s sultry voice inside a metal bucket’ and his tiny, puppet son, this might have been adequate, if uninspired. As a so-called feature film event, blown up to IMAX with Sigourney Weaver roped in to deliver a few lines, it’s the dullest and most inconsequential Star Wars film ever made … And as much as little Grogu, with his fuzzy, twitchy ears and chubby-cheeked smile, remains a slam dunk on the cuteness scale, Favreau has reduced him here more to strategy than character – something to cut to when the characters have run out of things to say.”
The New York Post: “The film’s relative modesty comes as something of a relief. Freed from the burden of canonical responsibility, it’s flighty fun; a Western-y space mission that’s commenced and neatly wrapped up inside of two hours … The many action sequences in which Mando battles water monsters and takes down land vehicles reminiscent of Imperial walkers give you a jolt. They’re scrappy rather than epic, and admittedly nothing matches the scale of any of the clashes in the Rey trilogy. Yet, like cinematic Nicorette, they do the trick.”
The Guardian: “The badass bounty hunter and his little green friend take on the Empire and Jabba the Hutt’s family in this solid enough addition to the ever-expanding universe … The film is watchable and barrels along capably enough, but perhaps there isn’t enough of the humanity, humour and extravagant space melodrama which has made and continues to make Star Wars lovable.”
The Times UK: “A farcically weak story wheezing from its TV streaming existence into the multiplex and drooling out bits of fanboy lore along the way. There are feeble nods to The Empire Strikes Back here and palsied winks to Return of the Jedi there, as if callbacks from the Iron Man director Jon Favreau had some magical revitalising power and were not symptomatic of a film and a franchise that exists in a grim creative void … Grogu is a dud non-character invented only for marketing memes and laptop stickers. He clearly possesses enough ‘force’ energy to solve all the film’s narrative dilemmas, minor to major, at all times but only intervenes during the climax because, well, that is his cue. As the actual Yoda would say, ‘No sense it makes! For the mentally weak, is this film?’”
