“STAR WARS: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU” My rating: C (Disney+)
132 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
We might as well accept that “Andor” was so freaking good that no other “Star Wars” spinoff comes even close to matching it.
Certainly not “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” a feature-length addition to the “Mandalorian” saga that never rises above the level of kiddie matinee filler.
Oh, it’s a technical marvel, sure. Great sets and costuming, killer S/F and some pretty good fight scenes.
But the script (from director Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor) isn’t even up to the standards of the streaming series.
Maybe it’s the length…each half-hour “Mandalorian” episode successfully stood alone while contributing to an expanded narrative. (They also has nifty references to past cinematic landmarks.) But at two hours plus the film’s near-complete lack of forward momentum becomes exhausting.
The plot, to the extant the movie has one, finds Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) in the hire of the New Republic. They’re bounty hunters assigned with rounding up former bigwigs of the defeated Galactic Empire who are still making trouble in various corners of the universe.
A huge chunk of the film is devoted to their attempt to rescue Rotta Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White), nephew of the late Jabba and now a gladiatorial slave on a distant planet. Rotta, of course, is one of those big slug creatures whose fighting style is part sumo wrestler and part steamroller.
There are also a crew of sawed-off space mechanics who seem derived from both the Ewoks and the cartoon Minions.
Among the few recognizable human faces is that of Sigourney Weaver, playing the Republic colonel in charge of the sweep effort…she looks really bored. Various voices are supplied by Martin Scorsese, Shirley Henderson, Stephen McKinley Henderson and others.
The yarn finds little Grogu growing into his role. He doesn’t speak, and he still has a childlike curiosity and ravenous appetite that are forever getting him into trouble, but he’s learning to use his Jedi powers. One comes to this effort hoping for more comic interplay between Mando and his little green sidekick, but it’s all pretty weak tea.
Pascal has only one scene without his helmet. Mostly he provides Mando’s voice. Two other performers, Lateef Crowder and Brendan Wayne, are credited respectively as Mandalorian Stunt Performer and Mandalorian Suit Performer.
Which I guess means that Pascal recorded his dialogue but was rarely on the set.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
“BACKROOMS” My rating: B- (Rent on Prime)
126 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms” defies explanation. So if you like your mysteries wrapped up with a nice tidy bow, you’re in for a long night.
Still, few films can match “Backrooms” for establishing and maintaining a waking dream from which there is no escape.
The operator of a shabby discount mall furniture store (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers in the basement a portal into a series of backrooms…a maze of what looks like an abandoned strip mall office spaces and hallways that goes on endlessly. Everything is painted in a sickly pastel yellow and lit by fluorescent ceiling fixtures.
It’s almost as hellish as a real strip mall office.
The deeper he ventures into this alternative universe, the more bizarre the architectural elements. Doors on ceilings, slanted floors, furniture that appears to have melded with the surrounding surfaces. In the distance we can hear voices muttering in different languages.
(Just a moment here to applaud the work of production designer Danny Vermette, who has created a sprawling backrooms world so big that it can be traversed by camera in a seemingly endless single take.)
The screenplay by Parsons and Will Soodik establishes early on that our protagonist, Clark, is a troubled soul. In sessions with his psychiatrist (the great Renate Reinsve, late of the Oscar-nominated “Sentimental Value”) Clark talks about his failed marriage, his struggling business and his long-dashed dream of becoming an architect.
Weirdly, his experiences in the backrooms appear to reflect— in hugely distorted form — those failures.
Eventually Clark pulls a couple of his twentysomething employees (Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell) into an exploration of the backrooms, an experiment that proves deadly. And late in the film the shrink finds herself trapped in her patient’s bizarre environment.
What does it all mean? Well, that’s the question.
A few years back Parsons produced a “Backrooms” internet series, and folks who are familiar with that says it goes a long way toward explaining what’s happening in the film. But I can only go on what we’re given…including occasional appearances by Mark Duplass as Phil, who watches all this unfold on a closed-circuit TV network. Apparently the backrooms are being studied by some shadowy corporation.
“Backrooms” never quiet satisfies narratively, but environmentally speaking it is a world unto itself. Glad I visited. Would hate to live there.
| Robert W. Butler
