‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ review: Decent one-off tries to restart ‘Star Wars’

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” boldly goes where no “Star Wars” movie has gone before.

Like rival “Star Trek,” it’s a movie spun off from a TV series.

The previously unheard of small screen to big screen leap shows how much the galaxy far, far away has changed. Eight years ago, there were no live-action “Star Wars” shows to speak of, and anything Lucasfilm put into theaters at least partly concerned Luke Skywalker and was a giant Hollywood event. 

These days, however, the Force isn’t as forceful as it used to be. Even considering the franchise’s 49-year vastness, cute little Baby Yoda from a streaming service is its only sure thing right now.  

I sense much fear in them.

And so this is a very different kind of “Star Wars” movie — an elongated and beefed-up episode of television that aims neither to be part of a broader saga or expound on one. I don’t see “The Mandalorian and Grogu” as a starting point for a series of films so much as a likable enough one-off with plenty of exciting action set pieces.  

The self-contained adventure directed by the Disney+ series creator Jon Favreau does not try to widen the “Star Wars” universe or even pile onto the “Mandolorian” mythology. I wouldn’t dare accuse it of containing character development. 

But, you know, 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 story, such as it is, is as simple as Chewbacca’s vocabulary and there’s no arduous homework to do in advance of seeing it. Unlike Marvel, you don’t have to remember five-year-old TV plots to merely understand what’s going on. The movie is pretty much all shootouts, fights, chases and adorable Baby Yoda antics. 

Oh, and science-fiction Rent-A-Star Sigourney Weaver cashes a check for a couple minutes.

The tale is set in the debris of the fallen Empire, with the galaxy lorded over by thugs and slugs. At the start, Mando (Pedro Pascal doing his careless whisper) is tasked by Weaver’s Colonel Ward, a New Republic leader, to gather a piece of intel from the Hutts.

The only way the pair of sleazy worms will help Mando is if he rescues Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), Jabba’s strangely buff kid who’s been enslaved on another “Blade Runner”-like planet and been forced to battle in the fighting pits. 

If you’ve watched the show, you know that the helmetted Mandalorian — a k a Din Djarin — isn’t the chattiest of dudes. So, here aliens do most of the talking, which can be weird.

Rotta especially. He’s akin to a second generation immigrant. While the other Hutts speak their own burbly language or use a heavy accent, Rotta’s smoothly delivered English sounds like he grew up in Secaucus. 

“You know how hard it is to be your own man when your father is Jabba the Hutt?,” he moans, not quite ready to return to his cave home. Needless to say, screenwriters Favreau, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor won’t need to prepare a Writers Guild Award speech.

But that doesn’t matter much since Mando and apprentice Grogo’s friendship is, in large part, expressively non-verbal.

The best section of the movie, actually, has no words or adrenaline-charged action at all. Rather the montage brings to mind Jedi trainee Luke sloshing around on Dagobah when pint-sized Grogu steps up to the plate as Mando is in distress. That sweet green puppet really never gets old.

Of course a “Star Wars” movie can’t subsist on “aww”s alone.

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. And they help justify “The Mandalorian and Grogu” showing at a theater rather than my laptop, because those scenes have been shot to beautifully fill an entire IMAX screen. 

Also elevating “The Mandalorian and Grogu” beyond an episodic is the dynamic score by Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson. Yes he also contributed music to the TV series, but he’s taken big career steps since then — better known as “Oppenheimer” and “Sinners.” Vibes of the Skywalker films, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” air-raid sirens and techno beats are combined into one rich and heart-pumping soundscape. 

Göransson should be the successor to John Williams when the next “Star Wars” film comes around — whenever and whatever that winds up being.