Yes, it's actually that bad

Rating: 3/10 (19 December 2017)

I don't know how this movie got made. You have Star Wars, a franchise that is guaranteed to succeed, with more source material than you could ever imagine. You have Disney, a megaconglomerate with virtually unlimited funding and resources. You have Rian Johnson, who I personally love as a director. You have Mark Hammill returning as Luke Skywalker.
How? How do you mess this up so badly? This is how:
By starting the movie off with "please hold" and "yo momma" jokes. By following up with the most nonsensical space fight in the history of Star Wars. By creating a superficial situation just to send your characters on a massive sidequest that results in absolutely nothing getting accomplished, besides taking up an hour of screentime. By inserting PETA messages into every other scene. By inserting SJW messages in between those PETA messages. By delivering these messages with such a heavy hand that they feel like satire, even to someone like me, who supports animal rights and the social movement.
The characters' actions make little sense. Not a single person behaves the way a normal person would, even in an alien galaxy. It's way too contrived just to fit a script that was nonsensical to begin with. Without spoiling things, someone has a plan, but won't share that plan, so other people make plans without knowing, and end up doing nothing but undermining the plan that would have initially worked had they not gone on an hour-long waste of time. It's just people running in circles the entire time, without making any progress.
I could rant all day, but I don't want to spoil the specifics of how atrocious the plot becomes, or how idiotic everybody acts, or how everyones' actions result in nothing at all. There are probably three redeeming parts of this movie, which is the reason I gave three stars:
1. Kylo and Rey have the only interesting story, and are the only actors doing a decent job. I loved Ridley in TFA, but wasn't a fan of Driver. Now, these two are carrying the entire movie on their backs. They also have the best action sequence, even if they completely forget how to use the force during the entire fight.
2. The hyperdrive scene was amazing. It might not make technical sense, and it might have been wasted on a horrible character, but it was the most visually astounding moment in the entire movie, and the choice of sound was beautiful. It definitely should have been given to someone with greater importance.
3. The movie tries way too hard to subvert expectations, but there are two specific times it does this perfectly. I liked these choices because it drew focus away from the characters' pasts to their present actions, which I feel is more important. However, their present actions amount to very little, so once again this idea was wasted.
I would not recommend this movie to anyone. Ep.7 was bland, but at the very least, it got me hopeful for future movies. After Ep.8, I have absolutely zero expectations for future Star Wars films. While I was watching this, I kept asking myself if this was real life, and if this was actually the movie or someone's idea of a joke. It honestly feels like someone is deliberately sabotaging the franchise, either Disney or Johnson or both.
So, as reviewed by a long-time Rian Johnson/Star Wars fan who is also a strong advocate of animal and human rights, and who favors strong character development and plot over explosive action scenes... This movie is a meandering, pandering, too-many-fingers-in-the-pot pile of steaming turds.