In the past 50 years, Star Wars has gone from a blockbuster cinematic experience to a global merchandise brand to a Disney+ streaming juggernaut with outputs of varying quality. 

In 2019, The Mandalorian kicked off the latter phase, introducing the world to Pedro Pascal as Din Djarin and his adorable (and highly merchandizable) sidekick, whom the internet lovingly called Baby Yoda. The first season of the show felt fresh and inventive with excellent music from Ludwig Göransson and a fusion of storytelling and new tech through the use of The Volume. It was a small-scale story about a bounty hunter who didn’t have magical powers but relied on an internal moral code to guide him. While his tiny companion couldn’t even talk, we understood their bond and felt the tension from evil forces trying to tear them apart.

Throughout the series, we learned that Din was part of a more hardcore splinter group who strictly adhered to Mandalorian rules—something that allowed the production to disguise that our helmeted hero was often a body double with Pascal dubbing in post. We also discovered that the 50-year-old Baby Yoda was actually named Grogu, and that he had strong Force sensitivity and connections to some other major characters from the Star Wars saga, allowing for fan service moments and the type of brand synergy that Disney seems to love.

Since then, we’ve had three seasons of The Mandalorian, mediocre streaming spinoffs like The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, deep fake Luke Skywalkers, Jedi backstories, and Andor as a rare gem of brilliant storytelling in a saga that can feel overstuffed. Gone are the days when audiences had to wait years for more Star Wars; now there’s enough Star Wars for every audience all the time, and the grand scale of a cinematic story seems to be flooding the small screen. 

So that’s how we arrive at Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the feature film continuation of Din and Grogu’s story.

Our dynamic duo is now working for the fledgling New Republic, putting their bounty hunting skills to work helping round up surviving Imperials who are secretly plotting to restore the evil Empire.

Their primary contact in the New Republic is Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), who comes off like the police chief in an ‘80s action film. She doesn’t always agree with Mando’s methods, but she puts up with it because he gets the job done. 

During one of their missions, they’re contracted by twin Hutt crimelords to find their nephew Rotta (Jeremy Allen White), the only surviving heir of Jabba the Hutt. Of course, since we’re dealing with crime lords and Imperials, double-crosses ensue, leaving Din and Grogu to face a series of challenges in their adventure.

As someone who was feeling pretty burned out on Star Wars, I greatly appreciated that The Mandalorian and Grogu was a standalone story. It’s so much easier to have fun when every scene isn’t trying to set up a spinoff or push forward a larger phase of a cinematic universe. 

Instead, we get a bounty hunter dad showing his adopted son how to survive in the dangerous world of Star Wars, mercifully free from dozens of shoehorned in Glup Shitto moments. After the uncanny Luke Skywalker, the covert Mando season hidden in The Book of Boba Fett, and the near constant “I clapped because I know what that is!” moments in Ahsoka, it was a huge relief to have a Star Wars movie that was allowed to focus on the main characters.

Similarly, the visuals here feel slightly elevated over small-screen Star Wars. The environments don’t feel confined to The Volume, and we don’t have to spend the whole story on yet another desert world that looks exactly the same as the last ones.

An opening action scene, in particular, gives us good CGI and satisfying combat where the hits have weight to them. Thanks to Brendan Wayne (grandson of John Wayne) and Lateef Crowder, who are behind the Beskar armor in all but a few scenes, Din’s fighting feels grounded in reality in a way that a backflipping digital double just never can. 

We also get a lot of great creatures—some CGI and some stop-motion courtesy of legendary artist Phil Tippett’s studio. It’s a refreshing visual change that adds a vintage vibe to the film, making it feel more like classic Star Wars than streaming Star Wars. 

And, of course, it wouldn’t be The Mandalorian without the incredible music of Oscar-winning composer Göransson, whose western-inspired theme song became an instantly lauded staple of the series. In the film, a sequence set in an urban underbelly reminiscent of Blade Runner features a synthy score that elevated the whole experience. 

But even with all these solid elements, that’s not to say that The Mandalorian and Grogu is top-tier Star Wars. 

The structure is strange. In many ways, it feels like a bundle of episodes squeezed together for a feature film. While that three-episode arc structure worked for Andor, in The Mandalorian and Grogu, it feels like the story concludes, only to keep going into the next story block with a major lag in the middle. Even the die-hard audience in my packed theater was visibly fidgety at the start of the second half.

Some of the dialogue is clunky and obvious, almost as awkward as the prequels. Rotta, in particular, spends the majority of his lines repeating the same two or three sentences about how he wants to be different from his father. For a feature film, it feels a bit like second-screen dialogue, and it completely limits the character, making me wonder why they even bothered to put a notable actor in the role.

The Mandalorian and Grogu is further proof that there’s something Star Wars for every audience. It’s not going for the moral complexity and deeper characters of Andor, it’s not going for the empty fan-service of some of the streaming shows, it’s not even going for the sweeping epic of the Skywalker saga, it’s just a little space adventure about a father and son. It’s a continuation of the show that isn’t dependent on the audience memorizing a bunch of Wookipedia pages to care about the protagonists. 

Simply put, if you like the show, you’ll probably like The Mandalorian and Grogu. If you’re looking for something more epic, more weighty, or that feels more cinematic, you’ll probably find this film okay. It’s not particularly memorable, but it’s a fine time at the movies—and at least we didn’t have to endure any CGI legacy characters to come take all the agency away from our protagonists.