Unoriginal, silly/goofy, and implausible

Rating: 3/10 (8 January 2016)

People's response to this movie has been, at times, emotional. It would seem that this was the point, since the movie added essentially zero to the saga, the universe. I won't give any spoilers, but there isn't much of a plot, it really seems more like an excuse to draw different audiences and make it a big hit. It worked, apparently.
The classic soundtrack, the trailers showing the old characters and some quick action scenes, I think, really thrills old fans or simply people who enjoy the universe.
To attract the new generation, I guess they went with this cheap, silly sort of humor. It seems that every 5 minutes or so we get a pun or a slapstick joke. For a while, you get some good laughs, but it gets old really soon, since it's just cheap, self-referential, and just plain goofy. When one of the main characters mocks the Force, that was one of the lowest points of the movie for me. It became so clearly a joke, that whatever remainder of the suspension of disbelief (you know, for a moment you decide to agree that what you're watching is coherent with its own rules, so you accept absurdities that clearly are not possible in the 'real' world) was dispelled, and I just suffered through the rest of the movie.
We also had a female main character and a black man playing a stormtrooper deserter. I couldn't care less about any of that, I only care if the character is well played, I think this sort of 'polemic' is getting old, but I suppose it still makes blogs, sites and papers say how brave the filmmakers are, which is preposterous to me. It's 2016, to paraphrase Justin Trudeau, this sort of thing shouldn't surprise anyone. As significant portions of the population, it's only natural that they should be in movies (it is statistically correct) , whereas once mostly white people played most characters (overrepresented). But performance is still the criteria. I enjoyed Daisy Ridley's work, but Mr. Boyega's was too over-the-top and too goofy to be believable - maybe he is not to blame, it's the crappy character he had to play.
I think that Adam Driver as the villain of this movie is just an incomprehensible choice. His teenage, Jon Snow sort of looks, just doesn't go with what you would expect of one of the main agents of the remnants the Empire. A teenager with daddy issues, trouble to control his emotions, and outbursts of anger hardly make for a memorable villain. He is another joke. Maybe Disney hoped he would be a sort of Jon Snow ladies would drool over?
This reflects the downgrading of the cast. While there were bets, some more and some less successful in the previous movies, there were other characters that made up hugely for the others' mediocre performances. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, from the old Hammer movies, are examples of the sort. While Anakin was a similar sort of revolted teenager, and we could have been provided with greater nuance of emotions and background, he was far more believable and even had some great moments and lines. With this new movie, it feels a lot like a massive downgrading of the cast, as well as non plausible changes in the old characters, as I mentioned with Chewie, but also with Lea, aka General Organa. Harrison Ford is... well, Harrison Ford. I think it's pretty good, the problem is that he cannot save his character from festival goofiness and bad writing he has to confront with.
Finally, a word about the plot itself. This movie isn't very plausible and its revamp of old themes is so absurdly shameless and pathetic you can see it in every dimension of it (the hysterical commander of the First Order is another joke). Clearly, little thought is given to Star Wars as a universe, with creatures, planets and a history of its own. Disney had already said it would not follow the alternative universe created, so you'd think that they'd have an interesting alternative, but that's not the case at all. We have no answers, no background, no nothing. We know as little about the Resistance, the former rebels, as in the original trilogy. If back in the days that was understandable due to its constraints, it's not forgivable now as an almost universally well known franchise. Of the restored Republic, and its relations to the Resistance (for one, why wouldn't the Resistance join it? Isn't that what happens in several post-conflict situations?), we know nothing, and apparently that doesn't matter. Plus, there's little that is coherent in the movie - if you ask the whys and the hows, that is, if you think, the movie will not be an enjoyable experience.
I've heard many people saying that this is a movie to the old fans. It certainly is not. It may be framed to look this way, to look sort of reverential, but it's a shameless piece of garbage, goofy, unoriginal, terribly written, a joke, in one word. Some of the people who watched the old movies have enjoyed it, but their response has mainly been emotional: they surrender when they hear the glorious soundtrack, the enhanced effects, the old actors. If people just want to be entertained, then what can you say? Then you not only have an unconditional suspension of disbelief, but also of reason. It may work for some people, but I think that entertaining does not necessarily mean a moment when you put your brain aside and laugh, because you're a light-spirited person, not a grumpy one like me. Plus, Cinema is an art, and you aspire to greater things than just having a good laugh and surrendering to emotions. The tradeoffs are not so absolute, as some people present them to us.