Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Not the best work of any of the filmmakers involved, this prequel does have good special effects and a hilarious turn by Donald Glover. Jack and I are not Star Wars devotees, though.

Alden Ehrenreich (last blogged for Rules Don't Apply) plays Han Solo as a cocky maverick and Woody Harrelson (Oscar-nominated for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) his not-so-patient mentor Beckett. Emilia Clarke (I've seen only a few minutes of her 56 episodes of Game of Thrones and none of her other projects) is Solo's love interest Qi'ra (rhymes with near-a). As mentioned, Glover (most recently in Spider-Man: Homecoming) chews up the scenery as the arrogant Lando Calrissian. And we like Phoebe Waller-Bridge (she had small parts in Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady and we've been meaning to watch her Amazon series Fleabag) as the R2D2-like robot named L3-37. Jon Favreau (small part in Spider-Man: Homecoming) voices Rio, the pilot with four arms.

Ron Howard (last blogged for the documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring  Years)  took over the directing reins about halfway through. He and the Kasdans (son Jonathan directed/wrote In the Land of Women (2007) and one other and father Lawrence last wrote Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens) would have been better served by trimming the 2 hour 15 minute running time, especially the fighting. At one point I whispered to Jack, "Who are they fighting?" and he shook his head, replying, "I don't know!" We had read in the trivia that Howard's wife Cheryl (they were already married and had baby Bryce when I met Cheryl in 1982) appears in all of his movies and that this time he had to insert Cheryl's picture digitally after the fact. We missed her appearance--I'm guessing it's in the bar scene. Please comment or write me (babetteflix at gmail) if you find her! I did spot Howard's brother Clint Howard, who, as usual, has a cameo with some hand to hand combat.

John Powell's (before I mentioned him in How to Train Your Dragon 2 he scored Fair Game) one hour 17 minute soundtrack can be streamed from this youtube link.

We picked this over Jurassic World for our yearly pre-fireworks movie because of Glover, Howard, the age of this release (it's been out longer so will leave sooner), and its Rotten Tomatoes' ratings--at 71% from critics' and 64 from audiences, mirroring our feelings--it's still higher than the dinosaur one.