Disney’s accountants cook up another unwanted and unneeded origins movie filled with Star Wars porn designed to keep the cash registers tinkling instead of moving the Star Wars universe forward; Solo is no different. The alleged ‘space western’ is nothing of the sort, despite various speeder chases, train robberies, and a lengthy and gloriously daft effort to explain a throwaway line from 1976 about the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. They really shouldn’t have bothered.
As an origins movie the whole is decidedly less than the sum of its parts; a cut-and-shut by Ron Howard from the garage spares left behind by first director Phil Lord and Chris Miller – the old ‘creative differences’ chestnut which we guess was the poor cut-and-paste script devoid of any original thought. Which is massively disappointing given the pedigree of writers Lawrence and Jon Kasdan.
Expensively mounted and shot in the live-action sequences, much of the VFX shots look like the Clone Wars cartoons. The second half gives us plenty of Millennium Falcon action, including a giant space squid (echoes of Empire Strikes Back); overall it reminded me of very hackneyed old Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers adventure serials which is either a really clever Lucas fan-reference or unintended consequence of edits and re-edits.
Alden Ehrenreich (Hail Caesar) is passable as Solo; Emilia Clerk underplays admirably as his femme fatale, but he should know with her cut-glass British accent, he can’t trust her any more than Paul Bettany, (Avengers) who phones in a performance as a classic British villain and is still the best thing in it. Why is it the Brits are always the Hollywood movie villains? It’s because we burnt down the White House in 1812, isn’t it?
Donald Glover as the younger Lando tries desperately hard to be cool in a cape. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is an entirely unconvincing Android-rights campagining robo-navigator. It is left to charismatic Woody Harrelson (Hunger Games) to inject some moral ambiguity as space-pirate Beckett, but as Solo himself says, Beckett is entirely predictable.
Solo does it’s uninspired best to entertain for a loooong two hours fifteen minutes and has it’s moments, but too few of them. The rest is a grab-bag of old Star Wars references and re-treads. Let’s hope the under-performance in ticket sales spares us another one. Probably not. RC
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)
Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, Jon Kasdan
Certificiation: 12A
Genre: Adventure, Sci-fi
Running time: 2hr 15min
Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany, Emilia Clarke, Thandi Newton, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Warwick Davis