^^^ I posted this vague-ish review on the Daisy thread:
The movie is unabashedly, shamelessly a rip-off of A New Hope, with plot points of Return of the Jedi. Literally. It’s so corporate, commercial and just lazy storytelling. JJ Abrams is the Mert & Marcus of filmmaking. I can’t get over how dumb the story is.
Daisy, however, is the runaway star of this new trilogy. And Adam Driver is surprisingly shot very handsomely, but I can’t stand his emo Vader-wannabe. But both give very strong performances that hold this weak story together.
But the most awesome comeback for me is Mark Hamill. He has shaped-up so impressively he’s handsome again, rather than looking like the typical comicbook/ collector nerd. He looks so much like an older Ewan McGregor— elegant, charming and handsome. And it’s his new appearance, along with Daisy and Adam, and director Rian Johnson that has me looking much more forward to Episode Vlll than this offering.
On first impression, it’s a fun, fluffy and mindless blockbuster, but completely reboot of the original trilogy. I think newcomers and kids will enjoy it very much since they won’t know about the exact storyline of the OT’s that this one is ripping off. And the hardcore fans will love it because it panders to their love of Han and Chewbacca, X-Wings vs TIES, nostalgia etc. But if you allow yourself to think about this film’s storyline critically, it completely diminishes everything the heroes of the Original Trilogy had fought so hard for to the point that it was a complete failure.
To be fair, the decent direction, solid performance of the actors-- Daisy is very charming, really strong action sets, and BB-8 will oveshadow the totally lazy and dumb story.
It's much much better than the embarrassing mess that was The Prequels. Although I still like Episode l for the designs and the potential it had to be a great story had George just collaborated with competent writers and directors, rather than do it all himself.