Movie Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu

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An enjoyable return to the Star Wars universe that offers few surprises and doesn’t do much to justify bringing these characters from the small screen to the big screen. Overall, the plot is too predictable. After just seeing one or two trailers and watching the first few minutes of the film, it’s clear how most of the story will play out. And like “The Mandalorian” television series, much of it is Mando participating in a series of “fetch quests” to accomplish his mission. However, the third act has a few small twists to freshen things up, but it’s at the expense of making the film feel bloated. It stars to feel like too long of a story for a movie, but at that same time it feels like it would’ve been hard to stretch it out for a season of the TV show without it feeling like there was too many filler episodes. The characters are just as likable as ever and Pascal puts on another solid voice acting performance. (Unfortunately, he only ends up showing his face for only a few minutes.) And after a few cute moments and an overabundance of jokes about his insatiable appetite, Grogu gets some time to shine as a character. even though he’s mostly a puppet or occasionally CGI. Speaking of CGI, there’s just too much of it. It often feels like almost every person, place and thing on the screen is noticeably CG. While it rarely looks bad, it usually is extremely obvious. This also hurts the action sequences, but despite that some of them are still pretty fun, especially later in the film. It’s also a bit disappointing that there weren’t any big surprise character appearances, considering that the current Star Wars shows often deliver some major legacy character moments.

**1/2 out of *****

Movie Review: Mortal Kombat II

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Despite fairly accurately recreating the story-mode of the modern Mortal Kombat games, this latest attempt at a film adaption feels too much like a video game and only stays afloat by a couple of entertaining performances. On paper, the plot is pretty solid, and it continues on from the first film while essentially mashing together the plot of the first two Mortal Kombat games. Unfortunately, it has many of the same flaws as that first film including plenty of characters with little charisma. Most of these carry over from the previous film, but even some of the newer characters are pretty one-note. Thankfully, Karl Urban breathes life into the film with his cantankerous take on Johnny Cage. (There are also quite a few laughs provided by the returning Josh Lawson as Kano.) This leads to another of the film’s big flaws: It starts off as Kitana’s story before pivoting to being about Cage, and then not really committing to either before trying to appease both. (And that’s also at the expense of Cole Young, who goes from lead of the first film to just a side character here.) In theory, this film features really cool fight scenes, but in reality, they mostly fall flat. There’s an extensive use of CG, not just in all the special moves, but also the blood and guts. Even many of the locations look unrealistic. In general, the film struggles between serious and campy, and every time it looks to nail dramatic moment or a cool fatality, the cheesiness shines through and knocks it down a peg. On top of all of that, like the games it’s based on, death tends to have little meaning so anytime someone is killed you can’t help but think that they’ll be back.

** out of *****