I really enjoyed it first time out in the cinema. It's not perfect but it's decent and many sequences are flat-out entertaining. There are a lot of bum notes, yes.
I question the importance of an original plot, I place these films in the lineage of planetary romance, formulaic plotting is absolutely fine by me. The issue is getting the emotional beats and the optics, the aesthetics, and the creative concepts straight, though.
There shouldn't be comic moments that break the fundamental seriousness of the fantastic depiction, for example. There shouldn't be uncool or excessively childish or cartoonish creature designs, or things that are simply very lame, and there needs to be an integrated, holistic feel. And there really shouldn't be visual and narrative non sequiturs like the whole Maz sequence.
The number of clangers they produce across all those aspects always surprises me.
