Cute, pretty, funny, but shallow and not especially interesting

Rating: 7/10 (21 December 2015)

The new Star Wars has spot on casting, is beautiful to look at, and is a familiar adventure. However, it lacks the spiritual depth of Lucas's original vision. You also can't use the word original to describe it, because everything in it has been recycled from the most popular of the other Star Wars movies. The one thing it does improve upon is the comic relief, which is the only thing that surprised me. Without the new humor and the chemistry between Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, this would just be a very predictable and sparkly retread.
I watched Ridley do some promotional interviews and there was nothing about her that stood out other than her youth, but she is marvelous in this. You might even say she does the best acting of anyone in any Star Wars movie, and she carries the dramatic parts of the film on her own. Her screen buddy, Boyega, is more of a Spencer Tracy to her Katherine Hepburn, and gets all the good one liners. Oscar Isaac, who had the best résumé of any main character, unfortunately gets nothing to say that hasn't been said in a previous film. This is the downside of being "the hotshot pilot" instead of the main protagonist . All of his lines are clichés. The baddies are all reruns of their predecessors, only with a few women baddies this time. That's another good thing about this movie. In most action movies, 90% of the characters are men. In this one it's more like 60%, and why not? It's refreshing to see more women, as opposed to more creatures or droids who only beep or growl.
The special effects are what the film needed to prove itself. All the ships look like their counterparts from the good old days, only shinier and cooler, and remarkably sturdy. Kinda like the way the new Battlestar Galactica looked just like the old one, only much, much better. If only they had done more to similarly upgrade the writing here.
Without giving anything away, if that's even possible in a film this predictable, most of the scenes are written as homages to scenes in the previous films. Sometimes there is a twist, but in the other umpteen times and things feel very copy and paste. Abrams did this to Star Trek, too. Any time he could have done something boldly creative like everything he did with Lost, he instead chose to play it safe and retread an old idea. There is nothing new to take away with you and ponder after the film. Most noticeably and sadly, there are no insightful words of wisdom from Yoda or Obi wan.
So, The Force Awakens is a crowd pleaser which, like the new Star Trek movies, will make a lot of money. It will not, however, inspire anyone to a thoughtfully idealistic perspective, which was what made the early movies so special. It is, in the end, a movie that will only be remembered for the financial records it set, and that is disappointing for those of us who love spiritual icons like Lost and Yoda.