Lacks energy and charisma of first three films, numerous plot holes, not even a good children's movie.

Rating: 2/10 (22 December 2015)

Admittedly I've never been a huge fan of the Star Wars franchise, and when I went out to see The Force Awakens today, I kinda expected too see an overblown kid's movie wrapped in mind blowing CGI effects.
Instead, however, what I found was a film that managed to be completely predictable, even though it was riddled with plot holes to sink the Death Star! For example, if the Galactic Empire had been defeated thirty years earlier, then why did the First Order (presumably the direct successors to the Sith) still have legions of white armored storm troopers at their beckon call, and shouldn't these storm troopers have been serving the victorious Galactic Republic, instead of the evil First Order? Also, why is there still a Resistance Movement if the war ended thirty years ago, and the Republic has supposedly regained control of the Galaxy? At first I tried to dismiss the growing mountain of plot holes by telling myself to relax, and by reminding myself that The Force Awakens was just a kid's movie, but the straw that broke the camel's back came when the huge planet sized Starkiller (an upgraded Death Star) was introduced without any real explanation.
How did the First Order manage to build such a huge death machine under the collective noses of the victorious Galactic Republic, and how does the atmosphere on the surface of the Starkiller manage to stay in place, once the Starkiller moves away from its home star? (The surface of the Starkiller looks a little bit like the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with tall pine trees, and snow capped peaks in the background.) Seriously, what was the purpose in putting an Earth-like land mass across the surface of the Starkiller? It can't be meant as a form of camouflage, because the Starkiller has a huge yawning rectangular shaped chasm about the size of Indonesia spanning its equator? Anyway, C3P0 is reduced to only a minor character in the film, while R2D2 is hardly given any screen time at all, and instead a cute new robot named BB-8 is introduced just in time for Christmas. Also, too much time is spent focusing on a cootish looking Han Solo, and a disturbingly bloated raspy Princess Leia.
The long and short of it is that The Force Awakens is not a worthwhile kid's movie, it completely lacks the energy and charisma of the first three movies, and it also lacks the mind-blowing action and CGI effects found in the most recent films such as Revenge of The Sith.