Satisfying but unoriginal reboot

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2015)

Everybody seems to either be jumping up and down for joy or chomping at the bit to dissect and destroy this film -- I thought it was just good clean fun, nothing as memorable as the original films but nothing to really complain about if you're a fan of this type of thing. The new characters are pretty well developed, especially John Boyega's "Finn", who has some of the attributes of Han Solo in the original film but who is also amusingly man-childish, which makes sense considering that his character has been locked up in a military academy and mopping floors on the death star in his spare time. It's charming when he flirts with Rey (Daisy Ridley) like a 14 year old with his first crush, and when he's reunited with pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac), he thinks Poe is serious when he starts ribbing him ("hey, that's my jacket!").
The big drawback, at least for those of us who are familiar with the original films (which is to say, about 2 billion people on this planet), is that it's basically a remake of the first "Star Wars" film. It begins with an orphan on a desert planet who finds a droid with important data, its emotional climax comes 30 minutes before the end of the movie with the death of a primary character, and its main threat is another "technological terror" capable of destroying entire planets. We even get treated to another dull scene where Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) sits in a room staring at a holograph while the men go off and fight the bad guys. Perhaps with all the fans complaining about Lucas' "prequel" films not being enough like the originals, the screenwriters (including Lawrence Kasdan from the original films) thought that people really just wanted a remake.
It's neither good enough nor bad enough to deserve as much attention as its getting. It possesses neither the highs nor the lows of the prequel films. As he did with "Star Trek", director Abrams has managed to bleed all political meaning out of the series. The film's weakest element is its villains -- Andy Serkis' "Snook" is just a big CGI that looks, feels and sounds like Gollum from the Tolkien movies. Adam Driver's "Kylo Ren" (one thing you can say about the movie is that at least they keep the streak of ridiculous names going, although nothing here is as golden as "Count Dookoo") is a pouty emo-kid whose only interesting element is that he seems to admire "grandfather" Darth Vader but doesn't seem to be quite evil enough to stand a comparison with him. Worst of all is Domhnall Gleason's one-note politician bad guy, who seems to be in the movie simply to fulfill whatever vague role Grand Moff Tarkin had in the original film.
People who like "Star Wars" movies are going to enjoy it. People who think "Star Wars" movies are the greatest thing ever are going to hate it, because nothing is ever good enough for them. Everybody else is just going to forget about most of it a few months from now.