'Star Wars: Skeleton Crew' review: Disney+'s kid-friendly adventure

If the new Disney+ drama Star Wars: The Skeleton Crew had made its debut when I was eight or nine years old, it would have suddenly pushed me Knight Rider And The Dukes of Hazzard aside to become young Daniel's favorite television show.

While the original Star Wars saga, a series of three films and only three that I was barely obsessed with, was designed to be child-friendly, at the same time it was a generally child-free world. Instead, we focused on alien creatures or robots that looked or acted like children — as well as Luke Skywalker, whose arc took him from unfeeling youth to mature Jedi.

At the same time, with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment at the forefront, we were treated to a series of junior quest stories of varying quality – films that captured one of the last cultural moments in which children were allowed to going for a walk in the morning, having to live a day of adventures and returning home without their parents worrying about their existence without a trace and without a phone. It is a genre that includes AND, Willow, Space Camp, Adventures in childcare, The Goonies and too many others to count.

Skeleton crew creators Jon Watts and Christopher Ford did not hide their inspirations by attempting to create a story in the style of Amblin taking place in the Star Wars universe, and through the three episodes sent to critics, they succeed overall. Although its coming-of-age tale is far less revolutionary than Watts and Ford's talk seems to suggest – supremely powerful juvenile heroes and their gruff babysitters were already the backbone of the Disney+ brand /Lucasfilm – the series is lively and fun. This generally low-stakes, thematically light, youth-oriented game takes us to under-explored corners of the seemingly limitless galaxy while still feeling pleasantly familiar.

Our adventure begins on At Attin, an Earth-like planet that looks distinctly like a Spielbergian suburb of California circa 1982. This sea of ​​cookie-cutter houses, dead ends, and lawn-mowing droids is a perfectly normal place and Wim (Ravi Cabot -Conyers) is a perfectly normal kid raised by an overly busy father (Tunde Adebimpe). Wim enjoys pretending with his buddy Neel (Robert Timothy Smith), who comes from a breed of blue elephant that is apparently NOT the same breed of blue elephant that previously gave us Max Rebo.

While Neel follows rules and dreams no bigger than his well-tended garden, Wim yearns for something more – which is complicated, since his elementary school class is about to take a career placement exam that will lead students toward a workforce that fosters future analysts and administrators. There's no room for someone like Wim, who wants to be a hero, but doesn't even know what a hero would look like.

Then Wim, obsessed with stories of Jedis, finds something buried in a ravine in the forest near his neighborhood. He thinks it's a Jedi temple; instead, it's a spaceship. Wim is quickly and unexpectedly thrown into space with Neel and his slightly older children, Fern (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), the rebellious and high-achieving daughter of a local official (a somewhat emaciated man). Kerry Condon), and KB (Kyriana Kratter), Fern's technologically savvy best friend.

Soon, this quartet of children gets lost in space — not to be confused with Lost in spaceone of many clear inspirations that (aside from subsequent reboots and remakes) predate the frame of reference of the core audience of older millennials and their tweens.

None of the young characters are deeply complicated – although I've never had to go through adolescence as a blue elephant-like creature, so it might be harder than I think – but the energy is appealing and youthfulness between the four protagonists calls to mind what Watts did with slightly older characters in his Spiderman movies. You never worry for a second that the children are in danger, despite a title that stems from the actual dead bodies on the ship they're traveling in. But all four performances, mostly vocal in Smith's case, are in this well-organized Spielberg film. vein encompassing both wide-eyed wonder and insistent courage.

You will notice a lack of mention so far for Jude Loithe multiple Oscar nominee who is by far the biggest star of the cast (with the possible exception of Jaleel White, playing a pirate who watches a succession of wacky events with the cool confidence of a man who, in fact, , did not do this). Making his appearance in the second chapter, Law's Jod Na Nawood is introduced as a very familiar genre archetype – the selfish thug who befriends our diminutive protagonists, even though we know we should, under no circumstances, trust him completely.

Will future episodes reveal that even though we think he's only in it for himself/the money, he's actually just a bunch of rough edges needing to be smoothed out that don't can only be caused by an intense window of forced paternal activity? Who can say for sure, but given the precedent set by The Mandalorian And Obi-Wan Kenobi (and, to a lesser extent, both The Acolyte And Ahsoka), I'm going to take a risk and say, “Yes. Jod Na Nawood is probably just a big old softy at heart. Prove me wrong, Skeleton crew!

It's no coincidence that it's a role that exploits many of the things Law plays best – namely the kind of man you'll follow into battle even suspecting he's a cad. If Gigolo Joe were Virgil through Fred Astaire, leading an innocent “child” through a Spielbergian nightmare hell in Artificial Intelligence AIJod Na Nawood is Virgil by way of Errol Flynn, performing a similar task.

It's my adult instinct that the narrative initially lacks a central villain or a goal that goes deeper than “four kids want to go home.” But… why is this my instinct? The “Homecoming Odyssey” format is quite resilient, allowing for individual journeys of self-discovery. Wim, in particular, has a lot of growing up to do, going from zero to hero, so to speak. Fern is a natural leader, but she hasn't yet figured out how to combine her hustle and authority. KB and Neel will likely learn to be more adventurous as they discover that the society they come from and the rules it adheres to may not be what they seem.

And if it doesn't work for you, Skeleton crew claims a lot of space hacking, which very young viewers will compare to Pirates of the Caribbean (Or One piecewhich in its anime and Netflix incarnations is actually a very close tonal pair), viewers my age will compare themselves to The Goonies and more seasoned viewers will compare themselves to vintage swashbucklers like The sea hawk Or Captain Blood. Mick Giacchino's terrific score contains a lot of John Williams, but at least as many composers who inspired Williams, like Erich Wolfgang Korngold. In a show where the effects are good and the sets okay, Giacchino's music is the element that often elevates otherwise modest (or intimate) attributes.

So maybe there's no treasure the characters are looking for, and maybe there's no sense that if they don't achieve a goal there will likely be big consequences . This undoubtedly makes Skeleton crew feel more shapeless than would be acceptable if the series had been reduced to a movie. Instead, each episode takes the characters to a different outpost in space, none of which are exactly places we've visited before. There are no generic desert planets or swamp planets. There's a miserable hive of scum and villainy, but it feels more like an interstellar truck stop than Mos Eisley – which is a good thing because if the show had visited Mos Eisley, there's a chance Neel and Max Rebo crossed paths and forced the creators to explain that whatever Neel's species is, he is not Ortolan.

Several other background characters in Skeleton crew vaguely resemble the creatures we've seen in previous franchise entries, but this isn't a show that's stuck with callbacks or call transfers. There is no basic class criticism of Andor or the imperative to fill in the gaps of several other recent Disney+ series, making it entirely self-contained in a way that I appreciated. Kids may know some elements of the franchise's mythology, but they don't care about Jedi genetics, government oppression, or the details detailing trade policy. They've never left their home planet before, so everything is amazing, scary, or sad for them, in sincerely emotional terms.

Watts then David Lowery, who directed the second and third episodes in peak Pete's Dragon form, I want to honor the characters' experience in a sincere way. Although they are drawn to cute creatures, strange food, and scary-but-not-too-scary circumstances, the joy more than anything lies in the “What if?” » of all this. I'll be curious if there's more tonal or visual excitement in future episodes, directed by The Daniels and Lee Isaac Chung, but I'm willing to take it. Skeleton crew intends to be something more modest and more accessible to generations.

Skeleton crew is a show about and for brave kids (and inner kids) free to stay outside playing after dark and eager to imagine a bigger world beyond the confines of an easy bike ride. If you accept the mantra that all Star Wars the series must be Andorthat's probably my no-Andor Star Wars series since The Mandalorian spear.