You know you're in trouble when it doesn't even play the Star Wars theme at the start

Rating: 5/10 (19 December 2016)

I haven't read other reviews or discussions yet, having just come back from watching this, but I'm surprised at the high score it's received on IMDb, when both the person I was with and myself came out being far from overjoyed with what we'd just seen.
The good:

The special effects are outstanding, particularly bringing back characters from A New Hope using CGI, which is near flawless.

The last 5 or 10 minutes, where it sets up the story of A New Hope, is very well done.

We see Darth Vader in melee action against the rebels.

The bad:

The pacing is terrible. It alternates between shows of action or battles and people making profound speeches (during which the action seems to stop), meaning that big set pieces that should be spectacular end up becoming tedious. There is way too much talking and conversation, which serves purely as filler and exposition, when the film should be focusing on showing us what's going on and not telling us.

The director does not seem to know how to film action scenes or set up what should be epic set pieces properly. Even the prequels, for all their disappointment, never actually bored me and this had me looking at my watch on numerous occasions as a lot of it managed to be dull in spite of the tremendous material the film had to work with.

The music seems to make a point of not reusing standard Star Wars themes as much as possible, it's nearly like they weren't allowed to and had to come up with a completely original score. There are a few themes that are reused, but they simply serve to highlight how inferior the soundtrack is to the other Star Wars movies.

There is virtually no characterisation of even the main characters, much less the supporting ones. This means that the viewer doesn't care a lot about what happens to them.

The ugly:

The dialog is worse than anything George Lucas wrote in the original or the prequel trilogy. It's properly cringe worthy at times.

Characters break the 4th wall on more than one occasion to speak straight to the audience to either deliver an ill judged comedic remark about what's going on or offer exposition about the events unfolding (I was half expecting one of them to look straight at the camera and ask "Everybody got that?")

Darth Vader speaks too much.

The actors playing the captain and pilot come across like they're reading direct from a script.

While storm troopers have always been known as being terrible at aiming, it's taken to new heights here with their combat ineffectiveness being near comical.

Overall:

Mediocre, and disappointing. It's worth watching on the big screen for the visual spectacle and nostalgia factor as you'll remember the story from the opening crawl of A New Hope, but that's about it. It's a definite cash-in with little care given to quality in terms of plot, direction,characters, or acting.