JASON EVANS' 100-WORD REVIEWS: The Mandalorian and Grogu

 Nothing but mediocre TV expanded to a big screen

Film critic Jason Evans is here to tell you everything you need to know about movies in less time than it takes to make the Kessel Run. His reviews are exactly 100 words long (99 is too short, while 101 is just excessive). Here is his 100-word review of Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.

The Premise: Star Wars returns to the big screen for the first time in 7 years. The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and his tiny companion, Grogu, are carrying out missions for the New Republic. They are mostly hunting down the Imperial warlords who remain after the collapse of the Empire. A New Republic colonel named Ward (Sigourney Weaver) asks them to rescue Rotta the Hutt, Jabba the Hutt’s son, who is fighting as a gladiator in the lawless outer rim. The Republic hopes this will turn the Hutt clan into powerful Republic allies. But Mando soon finds that Rotta doesn’t want to be rescued at all. The film is directed by Jon Favreau.

The 100-words: There’s nothing horribly wrong with this film, but nothing very right about it either. The plot is very low stakes, with little impact on the larger universe. It just feels like 4 episodes of the Mandalorian TV show mashed together -- even the pacing seems TV-like, with a pause every half hour or so, where an episode would naturally end. It looks good, but there’s so much CGI it is hard to connect with what we are seeing. Pascal and Weaver are rarely on screen. It’s sad that this is the best idea they had for a Star Wars movie.

Reach out to Jason Evans on Twitter @JasonDukeEvans