Not nearly as bad as I expected it to be...

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2020)

First of all, I do understand why people would hate this movie. But you may want to try to see the movie and expect nothing. And, most important of all, forget the other two "trilogy" parts. To be honest, the mess that "The Last Jedi" created was nearly impossible to clean up while doing the final part of a trilogy. So, let us start all over and consider "The Rise of Skywalker" as a stand-alone movie. And accept that this is a magical fairy-tale world in which, well, 10000 Star Destroyers can rise out of nothing.
As a stand-alone movie, it fares ok in view of the story (more on this soon) and has some great visuals. To sum up, I have been entertained. The movie has no real message to convey, true, but it is entertaining.
For the story... some people say it would not fit together. I say, it does. As a preliminary comment, noone ever explains what ties Kylo and Rey together. Maybe some things should be left to your own fantasy. Trust the force. There must have been a reason. However, to adress some points dislikers seem to bring up often:
a) Rey is "too perfect".
No, she ain't. We now, btw, learn that Leia, who has been trained, trained her. If you forget the last two movies, that explanation suffices. However, she makes mistakes and wrong decisions. She runs away (again). I think she actually WAS about to give in to Palpatine to save her friends, and it was only Ben who stopped her. She actually loses to Kylo/Ben on the remains of the Death Star. Her best sentence may be the kind of "Everybody thinks they know me, but noone knows me." She does not even herself.
b) The ending made no sense.
Oh yes, it made. Rey actually WAS all Jedi, just like Palpatine WAS all Sith. To establish balance, "all Jedi" and "all Sith" annihilate themselves just like matter and antimatter. This is why Rey obviously had to die. However, as she said when she healed the snake thingy, healing means "giving a bit of your own life force to help someone." When Kylo Ren died, the resulting Ben only lived because he had Rey's lifeforce in him. He gave it back, maybe because the force told him so (remember him saying to his father that he knew what he had to do, but not sure whether he had the strength). He had the strength to give Rey the life back that she gave him before. I think it may have been because he loved her... ;)
(I do confess I had a though of giving that lifeforce forth and back a few days, each not willing to accept the sacrifice of the other, but hey...)
Interesting side note: In my opinion, Kylo was the hero of this movie, not Rey. You might even construe the movie as a classical "girl does silly stuff, guy comes in to save her and even sacrifices himself for her", but I am sure most people would not like this notion....
Anyway, the story makes sense, just has no meaning other than to entertain you and simply has nothing to do with 7 & 8.