The biggest problem with this movie is that it had Star Wars in the title

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2015)

The expectations for this movie, fair or not, were going to be impossible to meet.
The GOOD:
* The lead character Rey played by Daisy Ridley could be the saving grace for this trilogy. She was fantastic all the way around. I almost immediately started to relate to her. The scene where she finds Luke's light saber and has a flashback was most definitely the best scene in the movie.
* Han Solo wasn't as good as the original Han, but Harrison was still able to reach deep down to pull up as much of the original Han as he could. Ford's effort in this movie did not go unnoticed by me. In particular, I've never seen a 73-year-old move so fast in the chase scene on his freighter. His scenes with Princess Leia weren't very good, but that wasn't his fault. On a quick side note, I hated the last Indiana Jones but felt Harrison did an excellent job in that as well.
* The humor and emotion Chewy brought to the table was priceless. Chewy's role felt slightly extended from the original trilogy, but just enough to positively influence the overall movie.
* Maz Kanata was a very interesting and mysterious character who I thought was cast and acted perfectly by Lupita Nyong'o. At a time when the movie was starting to fall apart, she did a nice job of adding some originality and mystery to the Star Wars universe. She had an oracle like feel to her. Also, the CGI on this character was very well done.
* The aerial battles between the X-wing and Tie Fighters were excellent. Considering JJ Abrams experience with space combat, this shouldn't have come as a big surprise, but the air to air combat was better than any previous Star Wars film.
The BAD:
 Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. This was a major F up by JJ and the crew. Anytime you have a movie as iconic as Star Wars with a theme so in your face as good vs evil, you need to nail the bad guy. All the villains in this movie felt terrible. Part of me feels like the current generation of kiddies (ages 14-21) messed this up. Another part of me felt like Disney messed this up. Ultimately I blame JJ Abrams for this colossal mistake. Can anyone say Christian Haydensen? The big problem with Driver outside of being an average actor, is when they decided to take off his mask. Part of me felt like that had to happen during the trilogy, but it happened way too early in this movie, and series. If you were going to take it off in this movie, the only right time to do it was in the final scene with Han, and not before that. Every scene when his mask was off revealing a clean Adam Driver was terrible.
 Carrie Fisher what happened? I didn't expect miracles from you, but I have a hard time believing you are only 59 years of age. You look and act 99 years old. I don't think I could see her mouth move when she spoke. She showed absolutely no emotion in this movie. Her scenes with Han were uncomfortable to watch. I understand wanting to bridge the gap between generations and story lines, but she felt forced and insignificant.
 The supreme leader deserves its own bullet point. Piggybacking off the previous point of Kylo Ren, the bad guys in this movie didn't feel bad at all. Who is the supreme leader? Where did he come from? Why is he so big? How did the empire reform into the first order? What happened to the Sith? How is the supreme leader connected to the dark side and the Sith? Some of these questions didn't need immediate or obvious answers but why even show him at all if you aren't going to reveal any of this information. JJ would have been better off going the George Lucas route, and wait until the second movie to talk about the Supreme Leader. Why was the CGI so bad on this guy?
 The special FX. If nothing else, Star Wars has always set the bar for special FX. While this movie was on par with the latest CGI technology available, it didn't do anything new. Some of the action scenes with explosions felt too much like movie sets. The CGI on the Supreme Leader was abysmal.
 The Plot. Too many holes, too many coincidences. Either too much was explained to cater to the child audience, or not enough was explained. The scenes didn't flow into each other. Too many transitions felt forced. Lack of originality killed this movie.
Conclusion: The biggest problem with this movie was the title. You take Star Wars out of the title, and movie is actually pretty damn good. The problem is the expectations are so high when comparing to the original trilogy that it is nearly impossible to meet those expectations. While I didn't expect the movie to be as good as the original, it ended up being a bigger disappointment to me than the Phantom Menace. Someone else mentioned that at least Lucas followed his heart with the prequels and tried to make something original. This movie felt more like a remake of the original trilogy than a movie that stood on its own merits. There were a lot of great things about this movie but without a coherent plot and smooth movie flow, the good gets overshadowed by the bad. The most anticipated released movie of all time was a disappointment to me, but I'm still excited to see what they do with episodes 8 and 9.