★★★☆☆

STAR Wars has already firmly pulled itself up out of the muck of the prequels with two main episodes of the ongoing saga in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi – as well as a grittier prequel offshoot in Rogue One. But the new crop of films has been reluctant to go down the route of focusing on the origins of a single much-loved, household-name character. Until now.

A troubled production that most notably included a change in director (from The Lego Movie’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller to veteran Ron Howard) and multiple reshoots may suggest a disaster of galaxy-sized proportions.

But while the end result is rougher around the edges than you might expect from a Star Wars adventure, it’s actually turned out to be an entertainingly spry prequel caper anchored by a brilliantly charismatic lead performance.

Set many years before the original trilogy, we meet a fresh-faced Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he embarks on a daring escape from the crime-ridden planet of Corellia, which he has called home, and is drafted to be a pilot.

Jump to a few years later and Han is, unsurprisingly, finding it difficult to follow orders. After meeting and befriending the ill-treated Wookiee Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), he joins forces with a group of space pirates, led by no-nonsense leader Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson) and resourceful Val (Thandie Newton).

He finds himself reunited with Qi’ra (Emilia Clarke of Game of Thrones), a fierce woman with links to his troubled past, as he agrees to take on a highly dangerous Hyper Fuel smuggling job at the behest of menacing crime lord Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany).

But to do this he’ll obviously need a ship, an endeavour which leads him to cross paths with eccentric chancer Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), captain of the Millennium Falcon.

The strength of this franchise era jump is undoubtedly in the shrewd casting and performance of Ehrenreich. Stepping into Harrison Ford’s considerable shoes, he positively nails the role by capturing the loveable rogue arrogance without it ever feeling like mere impersonation, to the point where it’s hard to see how anyone else could have played a younger version of one of sci-fi cinema’s most beloved characters.

It helps that he’s surrounded by a terrific supporting cast who each bring a lot to their respective characters. Glover in particular threatens to steal the show with his flamboyant portrayal of one of the saga’s best supporting players. You may well come away wishing we’ll soon get Lando: A Star Wars Story.

The wider cast provides a diverting yet ultimately inessential filling-in of the blanks beyond the obvious joy of things we know. The more interesting information, though, is how Han got his name, how he joined forces with long-time friend Chewbacca and how he came to captain the Millennium Falcon.

It’s all there as a fan-pleasing machine writ large across a swiftly paced yarn with good humour (not least the requisite sarcastic droid in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s L3-37) and a handful of boisterous action set-pieces.

It does lack a certain gracefulness in how the story plays out, functioning more along the lines of scrappy episodes that inelegantly hang together but are perfectly engaging in their own right. Overall the stakes just don’t feel that high and it suffers from that tricky issue that plagues most prequels: the fact that you know Han will make it out of this adventure unscathed because we’ve already seen what’s to come.

This film is generally less concerned about loftier ambitions and galaxy-threatening narratives that have shaped the main episodes and more focused on going off in its own corner of the galaxy and doing its own thing as a way to re-educate us about a much-loved character.

Was it needed in the first place? It’s a question that will likely leave Star Wars fanatics in endless debate. But for what it is, it’s an enjoyably breezy romp with enough Hyper Fuel in the tank to keep it zipping along.