A nostalgic ride with a fresh coat of paint

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2015)

What to say that has not already been said in previous reviews?
TFA is an immensely enjoyable journey back to the Universe that captured my heart when I was a child then left with torn feelings when the prequels landed.
TFA has just enough nostalgia and nods to the original trilogy to invoke my original love for the franchise and just enough freshness to stop it feeling like a retread.
One of the huge selling points for me was the humour. The tone is spot on for the movie, providing genuine laughs rather than the groans that the slap stick humour of Jar Jar Binks elicited.
The cast are fantastic, with the newcomers really giving great performances and leaving me feeling they could hold future movie's on their own steam should the old cast not return. Even the old cast seem to give better performances under JJ's direction.
You might read a few complaints about this being A New Hope rehash beat for beat... I came away feeling more like this was the movie George Lucas would make if his younger self was transported to present, with access to today's technology and film making techniques (is that a paradox since he pioneered most of today's techniques??).
I gave this ten out of ten... not for nostalgic reasons, but simply because as soon as the end credits rolled I wanted to watch the whole thing over again. Film making at its best!