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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 *****