We haven't had a big new Star Wars movie for seven years – and you may feel like we're still waiting after watching Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu (12A, 132 mins), which is essentially a TV special upgraded to IMAX. Here, 'the evil galactic empire has fallen', and with the galaxy's fate no longer hanging in the balance, we are treated to a scrappy sidebar adventure.
The plot, as far as it goes, is this. Mercenary bounty hunter The Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal, wasted under a helmet) and his tiny, cuddly foster child Grogu (a mini version of Yoda) accept a job from the New Republic's Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver – seemingly one of the last women left in the galaxy). Their mission? Rescue Jabba the Hutt's son Rotta, a musclebound slug voiced by Jeremy Allen White. To that end, the pair travel to a Blade Runner-esque planet, where Rotta is competing in a gladiatorial death tournament.
Cue a tooth, claw and tentacle assault of ferocious cage-fighting CGI creatures that sees director Jon Favreau gleefully throw all his toys into the pram. You want action? This over-delivers, with chases, shoot-em-ups, big clanking AT-ATs firing lasers and endless fights stuffed with more monsters than a Warhammer bargain bin. What it's not so strong on is good, old-fashioned, epic storytelling of the kind that made Star Wars, er, Star Wars. There's barely a whiff of suspense, and unless you've seen the Mandalorian television series, the crucial emotional bond between Mando and Grogu remains mysterious.
But the film has a not-so-secret weapon: Baby Yoda's cuteness. When in doubt, the movie simply has Grogu scrunch up his face like he's on the potty and emit an adorable sound. Resistance is futile.
Charlie The Wonderdog and Tom And Jerry: Forbidden Compass
The best half-term bet for smaller children is Charlie The Wonderdog (PG, 95 mins). This bouncy, by-numbers animation sees sweet old hound Charlie (voiced by Owen Wilson) get a new wag in his tail when aliens transform him into a superhero – while the fat cat next door (Ruairi MacDonald) becomes a feline supervillain. That the story ultimately bottles any gentle lessons about pet mortality is at once disappointing and, to most parents, a relief.
Public health warning: Tom And Jerry: Forbidden Compass (PG, 104 mins) is unforgivably terrible. Made in China as a Hollywood co-production with the Chinese state, this frenzied, incomprehensible caper sees poor old Tom and Jerry crash-land in a fantastical kingdom – where they're promptly sidelined in favour of a baffling array of not-even-one-dimensional characters, presumably drawn from Chinese religion and folklore. My head hurts just recalling it. Avoid.
Finding Emily: Best British Romcom Since Rye Lane
Once upon a time, Working Title were the people who gave us Great British romcoms like Four Weddings, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill and Love Actually. Then they were the people who gave us The Boat That Rocked and Grimsby. Now, 23 years after Love Actually, here comes something interesting. Finding Emily (12A, 111 mins) isn't set in posh London, but in student Manchester. Think more bucket hats than floppy fringes.
A hopeless romantic, Owen (a star-making turn from Spike Fearn) falls for a girl called Emily he meets at a club. So smitten is he that, despite being wrong-numbered by his mystery lady (on purpose? By accident?), he vows to track her down. His unlikely wingwoman is another Emily (Angourie Rice), a romance-refusing American student who is secretly using him as her psychology dissertation case study.
Attractive leads, a funny and eccentric ensemble cast (including Minnie Driver), uncynical sweetness and a fab soundtrack – Finding Emily has all you'd want from a romantic comedy. What breathes fresh life into it are the authentic Gen Z smarts that tackle today's anxieties around dating without trying too hard or coming across as achingly woke – making this the best British romcom since Rye Lane. The feature debut of TV director Alicia MacDonald (Lena Dunham's Too Much), with a screenplay from Rachel Hirons (A Guide To Second Date Sex), it's blessed with dialogue that feels natural, rather than packed with Richard Curtis-worthy one-liners. And if the far-fetched scenario loses its way at times, there's always something enchanting around the corner. It may not be flawless. But Finding Emily is a keeper.
Scarlett's Brush with Russian Mafia Doesn't Add Up
At the Cannes Film Festival last Saturday night, during a sustained ovation following the gala screening of his period crime thriller Paper Tiger (115 mins), writer-director James Gray made a flamboyant attempt to FaceTime his female lead Scarlett Johansson, who couldn't make it to Cannes. Alas, she didn't get to her phone either. Gray's call went straight to Johansson's voicemail and embarrassingly, with all eyes on him, he had to give up.
Aptly enough, the film itself doesn't quite connect either. It's wonderfully acted by Johansson and her co-leads Adam Driver and Miles Teller. And at times it is fist-gnawingly tense. But there are crucial aspects of the story that I simply didn't believe in. Johansson and Teller play Hester and Irwin Pearl, a decent, hard-working, mildly harassed Jewish couple raising their two teenage boys in the New York City suburbs in 1986. The family big shot is Irwin's charismatic older brother Gary (Driver), a former cop who has made a pile in private security. One night he comes to Irwin, a white-collar engineer, with a business opportunity. A stretch of polluted canal is being cleaned up ahead of some major real-estate development. If the brothers form a consultancy, they too can clean up. Unfortunately, this means dealing with fearsome Russian gangsters who run the canal. Gary isn't scared of them – 'I was NYPD don't forget, they're not gonna touch me' – but he should be. Anyway, while bits of the narrative don't add up, at least they fail to add up in propulsively entertaining fashion. In that seductive way of The Sopranos, Gray's movie mixes the domestic and the criminal to powerful effect. Paper Tiger is due for release in the autumn.
