Reviews! "Obsession," "Driver's Ed," and "Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu"

Horror/Comedy | 1h 48m | R | Theaters
Director: Curry Barker
Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, and Cooper Tomlinson

What’s It About? Tired of always being friend-zoned, a hopeless romantic uses a mysterious toy from a New Age shop to win his crush’s heart, only to discover he’s gotten exactly what he wished for at a terrifying cost.

Do You Recommend It? Yes… Obsession operates like an extended Twilight Zone episode: a simple premise (essentially a retread of The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs) populated by only a handful of characters and bent toward an inevitable moral lesson. Director Barker plays parts of it for laughs, but the gore, while initially unsettling, grows mean-spirited and pointless by the end. What’s puzzling is how few real complications arise from such a juicy setup. It should spiral outward, engulfing everyone in its chaos, yet it all remains oddly confined. Still, it’s all held together by Inde Navarrette’s feral, unhinged performance, which keeps threatening to push the film into something crazier than it ever quite allows itself to become.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Comedy | 1h 38m | R | Video on Demand
Director: Bobby Farrelly
Cast: Sam Nivola, Sophie Telegadis, and Mohana Krishnan

What’s It About? A group of high school students steals a driver’s ed car for a ramshackle road trip, helping a lovesick high school senior track down his college-freshman girlfriend in the hope of winning her back.

Do You Recommend It? No… What starts out as a genuinely good-natured teen comedy gradually sheds its freshness and sinks into the insipid mush of streaming content. The jokes never quite land with laugh-out-loud force, but for a while they keep you chuckling almost despite yourself. Then the whole thing drifts into a jumble of uninspired encounters and a watered-down version of that old Farrelly Brothers gross-out humor. It’s a pity, because the cast is likable enough and slips into these familiar archetypes with ease. This is especially true of Sam Nivola, who gives a kind of young Woody Allen performance and is appealing enough that you wish the movie around him were sharper, stranger, more alive.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Fantasy/Adventure | 2h 12m | PG-13 | Theaters
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Jeremy Allen White, and Sigourney Weaver

What’s It About? Mando and Grogu are hired by the fragile New Republic to hunt down scattered Imperial warlords that still linger across the galaxy.

Do You Recommend It? No… For all the flashiness of The Mandalorian, it kept its stakes relatively modest, unfolding in an undemanding episodic format. Translating that to the big screen is quite tricky, and The Mandalorian and Grogu almost pulls it off. Almost. The problem is that the stakes are simply too low to justify the movie’s length, and what worked as breezy television starts to feel stretched thin as a feature. The real standout is Grogu, an irresistibly cute creation (and merchandise bait) brought to life through a blend of animatronics and CGI touch-ups. Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded watching a tighter 90-minute adventure centered entirely around this little green critter instead.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆