Mandalorian and his sidekick Grogu in an escapist sci-fi aimed at youngsters [Nicola Goode / lucasfilms]

THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU
Directed by Jon Favreau
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆

PERHAPS the most damning criticism that can be made of a sci-fi is a lack of originality.
It doesn’t matter if the plot is basically cowboys in space, the starry-skied backdrop has to make the most of the fact you can literally invent anything you want to people a universe of your imagination.

And in Jon Favreau’s latest Star Wars film he manages to keep the interest going with a parade of creatures Jim Henson would be proud to give birth to.

It makes up for a wobbly plot set in worlds that we have visited in sci-fis before. Favreau was at the helm for the Mandalorian TV series, a shameless riff on Clint Eastwood’s Dollars trilogy (and brilliant for it). For this leap to the big screen, the space age knight for hire takes on both the fascistic empire and the mob.

Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) works for the New Republic, the rebels who did over Darth Vader and the Death Star. His job is to hunt down war criminals from Vader’s time and we join him on a job to rescue a giant slug-like creature called Rotta the Hutt, the offspring of legendary Star Wars baddie Jabba the Hutt, who has been kidnapped.

The Mandalorian has a small green creature called a Grogu as his sidekick – a Grogu is a baby Yoda, and we follow the pair as they dodge laser guns, fly ramshackle spaceships in galactic dog fights, blow up baddies and befriend cute aliens.

If you aren’t looking for anything cinematically meaningful, this film is perfectly OK. The problem is that Star Wars has made such a comet-crashing impact on Hollywood film culture, we elevate it beyond its pay grade. We don’t need an intricately characterised, Shakespearean-acted tragi-drama. Stop asking this franchise to always be a genre-breaking film beacon, stop expecting another wayfinder of a movie, as the original was in 1976.

Just let it be some escapist sci-fi aimed at youngsters, not a Casablanca-in-space – do that, and this Favreau story is more than decent.