Could be better

Rating: 5/10 (2 January 2016)

First, let me point out what's good about the movie.
BB-8 is a clever re-imagining of the R2D2 we have long known and loved.
I think that Daisy Ridley will be a fine Luke Skywalker.
John Boyega gives a good performance. He plays a soldier out of his element and unsure of everything that's happening to him well.
Lupita Nyong'o's Maz Kanata is the a great addition to the pantheon of memorable Star Wars characters. I hope that we see more of her.
I was very glad to see Max von Sydow in the opening sequence.
The special effects are expertly executed and J. J. Abrams keeps the action rolling.
If you're getting the idea that this review is going to damn the movie with faint praise, you're correct.
I was very hopeful when I heard that Lawrence Kasdan, who was responsible for the best script in the first three movies, The Empire Strikes Back, was going to be one script writer. The biggest problem for The Force Awakens is that the script is thin on ideas and character, long on action and the worse for it. For example, Han and Leia are now an old married couple. They are separated but still love one another. In the first three movies they expressed their love through a fusillade of shouted insults. In this script the fires that made their romance so delightful aren't just banked, they are thoroughly doused.
In the original three movies the Millennium Falcon was as much of a character as C3P-0 and R2D2. It was the bucket of bolts under constant repair. Han and Chewbacca did their best to keep from damaging it. In this movie the Millennium Falcon bounces off snowfields, wrecked spaceships, and miscellaneous other obstacles without any deleterious effects. The Falcon has suddenly become Supership, stronger than steel, faster than a speeding boson and it loses in the process. And, yes, there are two repair scenes but none after any of the scenes in which the ship should reasonably be damaged.
What we have is essentially a rehash of the original Star Wars script from 1977. There are a few variations and permutations but essentially, it's the same story. Supreme Leader Snoke fills in both for the Emperor and serves as the Dark Side's anti-Yoda.
For reasons that no one has explained the weak reestablished Republic is still an underdog fighting an inexplicably resilient empire. In real life we have our own difficulties keeping down resurgent fascism but it is a discredited, fragmented and derided force seventy years after World War II, not a force with vast clone armies and star destroyers patrolling the skies.
Does anyone in Hollywood have enough imagination to come up with some motive other than teen angst and rebellion against one's parents as a motive for a child turning to evil? At least Adam Driver has some acting talent unlike the execrable Hayden Christiansen but there are much more interesting possibilities to explore than Ben Solo's current motivations for becoming Kylo Ren. Thin script and little imagination again.
We always knew that there had to be someone who'd trained Palpatine to become a Sith lord and emperor. Snoke comes out of nowhere. Why? Isn't there enough evil in the hearts of men already to feed a near infinite number of dark sides? I understand that we've embarked on a saga that will see the redemption and probable destruction(when you have the script from Return of the Jedi already why write a new one?)of Ben Solo but wouldn't it be more interesting if we got a different story this time around? We expected to see R2D2 again but the script also fails us when R2D2 awakens. Why? If Luke Skywalker as a King Arthur figure sleeping on the Isle of Avalon until his people are in the direst need, that's fine, but put it in the script, please? Cutting one or two explosions to for some snappily written exposition might help.
I would love to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson explain the physics of a planet sized Death Star that either had to move through space (with what motors?) or risk running out of nearby suns to consume. Just because one can imagine a thing doesn't make it plausible and that goes double when the thing you imagine has to conform to basic physics.
And what's with Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron? Isaac is a perfectly adequate actor but his character in this film comes off as the proverbial teats on a bull. He shows up early on, disappears for great swaths of the film and then reappears to no great effect or consequence in the last third. Huh?
My current feeling is that J. J. Abrams is the unseen Jar-Jar Binks of this new series: the embarrassment that we all will wish would just go away. He knows how to handle action and CGI but can't properly direct actors. Without believable connections between the characters the series is going to fall flat.
So, if the new Star Wars saga is to become that wonderful continuation of a story we all love it needs a director who has some real interest in getting performances out of actors and a coherent and interesting script. Those things The Force Awakens does not have. I wish it did. I would hate to see the Star Wars franchise peter out because we never get to love Rey, Finn, Poe and even Kylo the way we did Luke, Leia, Han and Darth because there needs to be another crash or explosion.