The Mandalorian And Grogu: Mark Kermode scifi film review (video).

There was a time when a new Star Wars film arriving on the big screen felt like the second coming of sliced bread with lightsabers. Queues around the block. Kids waving plastic X-Wings. Grown adults arguing about moisture farming as though it were an economic policy paper. Now? Disney rolls another one into cinemas and the reaction increasingly resembles somebody discovering a slightly damp rice cake at the back of the cupboard.

So here comes The Mandalorian And Grogu, taking the streaming adventures of helmeted space dad Din Djarin and his tiny green chaos goblin to the cinema screen. Not just any screen either. IMAX screens so enormous you could probably see Grogu’s pores from orbit. And yet, despite all this galactic acreage, the film somehow feels oddly… small. Like stretching a Gregg’s sausage roll over a tennis court and still going home hungry.

The basic problem is obvious within minutes. This was originally meant to be television. You can feel it in the pacing, the structure, the “go here and fetch this” plotting that unfolds like somebody playing an RPG side quest while half-watching TikTok. There’s lots of moving around. Plenty of shooting. Things explode on cue. People nod gravely through helmets. Then everybody toddles off to the next mission objective before you’ve had time to care.

It’s not terrible. That would almost be more interesting. Instead, it occupies the dangerous modern blockbuster territory of “perfectly watchable while simultaneously evaporating from memory in real time.” By the time you reach the car park, your brain has already started deleting files to free up storage space.

Still, there are pleasures here. Chief among them is Grogu himself, still realised largely as a practical puppet rather than a CG blob. Thank the Force for that. The little chap remains infinitely more convincing than half the digital actors lumbering around modern cinema. Every tiny head tilt and suspicious blinking stare carries more emotional heft than entire Marvel phases. Werner Herzog famously defended the puppet during the original series production, calling anyone wanting to replace it with CGI a coward, and frankly the man was right. The puppet has soul. You can’t fake tactile charm with a render farm in Vancouver.

The film’s best moments all revolve around this smaller scale whimsy. Little mechanical droids fussing around ships. Grogu fiddling with controls like a toddler trying to launch the microwave into hyperspace. Odd creatures bumbling through the frame like refugees from a forgotten episode of The Clangers. At times it has the energy of an especially expensive episode of Thunderbirds directed after three pints of strong lager.

Pedro Pascal returns as the Mandalorian, although “returns” may be generous considering the man spends most of the film hidden beneath enough beskar armour to survive a direct hit from the council tax office. Modern Hollywood increasingly resembles a bizarre radio play where celebrities lend their voices while stunt doubles do the actual sweating. Somewhere along the line, movie stardom became a very expensive game of peekaboo.

There are familiar faces scattered about the galaxy too. Sigourney Weaver turns up in full “important authority figure explaining the plot” mode, while assorted cameos drift through like guests at the world’s nerdiest wedding reception. Fans will no doubt squeal approvingly at every reference and appearance. Casual viewers may simply stare politely while wondering if they’ve accidentally wandered into somebody else’s family reunion.

Visually, the film does have moments of grandeur. Dogfights zip around the screen with satisfying velocity, and the sound design occasionally threatens to shake loose nearby fillings. But spectacle alone only gets you so far. Modern franchise cinema increasingly mistakes “large” for “meaningful.” Watching giant machines crash into each other for the fifteenth consecutive year starts to resemble being trapped inside a washing machine full of CGI soup.

What’s strangest is that the movie’s genuinely successful elements are all gloriously tiny. A puppet. A glance. A miniature mechanic scampering about a spaceship. The intimate stuff works beautifully. The giant blockbuster machinery around it feels like somebody trying to inflate a charming bedtime story into a quarterly earnings report.

And perhaps that’s the real state of Star Wars now. Once upon a time, it sold us vast galaxies full of wonder. These days, the most memorable thing is still a 50cm-tall green puppet stealing snacks and looking mildly concerned.

Which, to be fair, is still more personality than half the galaxy far, far away currently possesses.