So, if you go into this origin story for beloved smuggler Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) with the proper mind-set, adjusting your expectations towards a film that’ll not rock your world but may possibly entertain you very well; if you only keep its tortured production history in mind half of the time; if you can survive Donald Glover’s embarrassing performance as Lando coming over like a little kid playing dress up; if you set aside Ron Howard – you might probably find a perfectly enjoyable bit of SF heist blockbuster cinema.
Sure, the film has a sometimes troubling difficulty with hitting the proper emotional beats, despite a game cast that’ll hit whatever note you ask them to it, and about a fifth of the action sequences look surprisingly naff. However, the other four fifths are pretty great – the train job and the big space chase being the obvious stand-outs – showing off some lovingly designed Star Wars places and ideas while using them for some damn fun set pieces.
Quite a few of the space opera heist elements work rather well, too. The film only falters there when its tone makes one of its peculiar shifts into too broad comedy instead of keeping with the slightly silly irony and the space adventures. Or when elements appear and disappear that thematically clearly come down from a much different version of the script than the one the film ended up with.
Being a modern Hollywood film, this does of course also feel the need to explain the origin of as much as it can of what we know about Han Solo, but most of that is fun enough and well enough integrated into the pleasantly episodic flow of the affair. It’s a bit of a mess, sure, but it’s an often very fun and usually never less than entertaining mess.
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