Perhaps time to stop now Disney...

Rating: 4/10 (14 December 2017)

I was fed the hype, including a number of critic reviews in the mainstream media, and am left wondering if they saw the same film that I've just watched.
Very, very average at best. Little discernable actual plot; just a sequence of set piece action sequences interlinked with pointless chummy, huggy dialogue between characters that I find it hard to care about.
It's cinema for the twitter generation. No actual depth to it at all, just a derivative movie which repeats (and repeats) the genius signals of it's early predecessors without doing anything at all new. What a horrible shame that possibly the most successful movie franchise of all time is reduced to this.
ACTING
It really is coming to something when Mark Hamill is not only the star of a movie but is also depended on to hold the whole thing up. I am coming to the conclusion that Daisy Ridley really doesn't have the talent to do her (key) role justice. Adam Driver actually steps it up a whole gear from the previous movie and was very watchable, but all the other characters basically shout thier lines at each other, clearly conscious of someone holding a stopwatch off screen.
SCRIPT
Star Wars scripts have always been legendarily wooden, but under Disney the bar has been lowered to a level that 6 year olds would find condescending. Let me provide an example :
Back in the old days (say) a Tie fighter would be attacking the falcon. Old dialogue was something along the lines of :
(Skywalker and Solo struggle to shoot fighter, Skywalker eventually bags it)
LUKE : "See I got one"
SOLO : "OK kid, don't get cocky"
In the new world that same scene is scripted :
(Finn and Rey struggle to shoot fighter)
REY : "Shoot that fighter!"
FINN : "I'm going to shoot it"
REY : "If you don't shoot it now we'll all be destroyed"
FINN : "OK I'm going to shoot it"
(FINN Actually shoots fighter, massive explosion on screen)
FINN : "WOOT! WHOA! Did you see that? I shot it"
REY : "Yes I did that was amayyzeeen"
FINN : "That was fantastic!"
REY : "Yes you are absolutely amazing"
I think you get my point...
Shockingly dreadful, CeeBeebies level scripting that almost had me yearning back to the good old wooden days of Hayden Cristensen wooing Natalie Portman.
AND THE DISNEYFICATION
Oh boy, here's where Disney should have left it alone. The film unfortunately trots out a small zoo of cute "Disney" creatures. From the pointless Llama-like creatures which have been stolen stright out of "Never Ending Story" to the little Pingus with big eyes the film starts to resemble one of those dreadful Pixar animal animations which only 5 year olds can bear.
I could almost write pages and pages about where this film goes wrong. The film raids the it's own archives for material heavily, refilms it and it's just not as good second time round despite having what appears to be a few $bn of effects thrown at it.
Thank you Disney Corp for actually managing to accelerate the ruination of the greatest movie franchise in cinema history. All that remains now is to bring back Jar-Jar Binks in a leading role.