Disappearing to France for a couple weeks every May (poor me), I tend to miss at least one of the early summer blockbusters—sure I saw Mad Max: Fury Road at Cannes, but I missed Tomorrowland! That movie’s entire disastrous run passed me by, a whole discourse lost. (I did watch it a year or so later and thought it wasn’t as bad as everyone said, but nobody cared to hear my opinion on Tomorrowland by that point.) This year, I was away for the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu, a family drama about a man and his adopted son helping out another needy boy. 

I decided to catch up with it pretty quickly after I returned, because what if there was some grand newsletter argument to be made about the first Star Wars movie in seven years? Well, it turns out I could have waited as long as I did to see Tomorrowland. The film, directed by Disney’s go-to guy for IP maintenance, Jon Favreau, is basically just an extended episode of the Mandalorian TV show, a questy standalone adventure that doesn’t advance the grander mythology of the Star Wars saga in any way. 

Normally, I would embrace such a thing. I love a single-mission movie, one that can exist on its own without heaps of backstory, untethered from the tangle of interconnected synergy. Much as I liked many of the one-off Star Wars novels as a kid (okay, fine, teenager) for existing discretely within a larger mythology (Courtship of Princess Leia, anyone?), I should probably have enjoyed Grogu, 

But I mostly didn’t. There’s a weightlessness to the movie that, yes, could be attributed to a franchise storytelling addiction forced upon me in the last 20 years by film studios. Maybe I grimly did want advancement of a bigger narrative, setups for movies to come, some sense of a steady accumulation on the way to a collective endpoint. If that’s the case, then I’m a little ashamed of myself. (Even if, to be fair, that’s kind of how Star Wars started.)

But I think the real problem lies in basic construction mistakes. The plot of the movie (written by Favreau, Noah Koor, and Lucasfilm chief creative officer Dave Filoni), just isn’t very interesting. It concerns Mando (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (George C. Scott) hitting the road to rescue a Hutt prince, Rada son of Jabba, in order to trade him for pertinent information vital to the cause of the New Republic. So there’s some fetching to be done, some befriending, and lots of icky, hissing, roaring monsters to be contended with. (This is a real creature feature, which sometimes feels like Disney trying to do their own Jurassic Park thing.) 

Does anyone really care about the fate of Jabba the Hutt’s son? Especially when he’s presented as a chip-on-his-shoulder, I’m-not-like-my-dad, nearly Arthur Millerian stock son character played by Jeremy Allen White with a voice modulation that makes him sound like Eric Wareheim? It’s all really lame: repetitive in its themes (or, really, one theme) and unsatisfyingly concluded, a bland straight line to the most obvious outcome. 

But Rada at least has something of an arc. There is no such thing for Mando, except I guess he gets his helmet taken off for a little bit so Pedro Pascal can actually physically play the character, rather than just voicing him. But otherwise, nothing really changes for the titular bounty hunter, except he gets a little more committed to the New Republic and he further bonds with Grogu. No real change, no significant growth that might justify the series spinning off into a movie. 

Grogu doesn’t develop much either, but he is fun to watch. The best part of the film is a section in which the little green baby is on his own, trekking around a fearsome jungle trying to save his dad. That part uses puppetry and other visual wit in an engaging way, giving the film a spark of personality it otherwise totally lacks. What can I say, Grogu is cute and I root for him, even when he’s stuck in something as plodding and ephemeral as this—a movie that in no way marks a grand return of cinematic Star Wars. It seems especially flimsy in the lingering afterglow of Andor, one of the best TV shows of the last many years—and, really, one of the best Star Wars things likely ever to be made. 

So that was a bummer, albeit an expected one. I did a double-header with Grogu and the new horror sensation Obsession, which I saw months ago out of a festival but needed a refresher on before recording this week’s Critical Darlings. (Thursdays, wherever you listen to podcasts!) It was just as impressive the second time around, a clever, nicely shot what-if about a lovelorn guy robbing his crush of her agency and suffering mightily for that transgression. 

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, it’s a really striking showcase for actress India Navarette, who runs a whole gamut of heightened emotion in an hour and forty-five minutes. The other day, a friend wondered aloud if maybe Navarette could get some actual awards attention for the performance, given that Amy Madigan has now kicked the door open for actors in horror. (There’s some historical precedent for that too, obviously, but it had been a while.) I don’t know if I can see this little movie going that far, but you never know! If it keeps chugging along like it has been, the possibility is certainly there. 

My 3:45PM screening on a Tuesday afternoon was almost completely full, perhaps the most heartening aspect of the whole thing. Overall, it has been a really encouraging spring at the box office, with a variety of movies—horror, comedy, biopic—all performing well. Yes, the biopic is about Michael Jackson, which is not great (read my take on that movie here), but it’s still a general positive that people are flocking to the movies right now. Rising tide, all boats, etc. 

That trend ought to continue this weekend, with the debut of Pressure, a movie about the weather during WWII. No, I’m kidding. It will probably be the Baby Yoda-directed horror movie Backrooms that hits instead. But I did see the Pressure trailer again before Obsession, and chuckled once more at Brendan Fraser’s histrionics as Dwight D. Eisenhower and the fact that D-Day and the events surrounding it have been covered so extensively on film that we eventually came to some writer or executive or whoever saying, “Wait, have we done weather yet?” Where might we go next? I can’t wait for the thrilling historical drama about the tailor who made all the soldiers’ clothes! I know that the weather forecast for the Normandy landing was actually really important, and I will see the movie because I like WWII historical drama, but it is still funny that there now exists a meteorological take on the subject.

I also caught up on some TV upon my return to the States, finishing Survivor 50 (great outcome!), HGTV’s masterpiece series Rock the Block (also a nice ending!), and the last few episodes of Top Chef before the finale. On the latter front, this week’s episode has an embarrassing, engrossing freakout from one particular contestant, who has always seemed to have a streak of nasty arrogance latent within him that he has now finally let slip. That’s always satisfying, when a reality guy at long last shows his true colors and you feel a smug sense of vindication for having correctly suspected who he was all along. 

On Friday I’ll write something about a scripted show I’ve just dived into and am enjoying, another surprisingly good Apple series. The streamer is on a little roll this spring, between that series and Widow’s Bay, which seems to have a struck a real chord with people in a way few Apple shows do. And not in the mouth-agape, head-shaking-in-disbelief fashion of The Morning Show.

As we head into the summer, which can be a doldrums, I’d love to hear from you about what things—what shows, what movies, whatever lies beyond that—you’d like me to cover, new or old. I’ve got some rankings and lists planned, plus coverage of all the big movies coming our way. (If you want, I can disclose what Disclosure Day is all about as soon as I see it.) But ‘tis the season for crowd-sourcing, so if you’ve got a suggestion—or a question for the mailbag—don’t be a stranger: [email protected].