Saw it last night, fun outing.
[spoiler]
The various fakeouts with character endings were cheesy, but enjoyable. I was mildly horrified when Finn appeared to be about to sacrifice himself, and pleased the script dodged that.
The way Luke tricked Kylo Ren with his long distance illusion had a little more class—for instance the slowly dematerialising "mirror dice" from the Millennium Falcon were a nice touch.
There were the usual awkward costume and creature design issues, but things like the porgs, the "crystal critters", the weird beasties that Luke is milking at his hideaway were all thoughtfully executed.
The creative decisions to succinctly get rid of Snoke in this film, and sideline Maz Kanata were extremely good. The CG characters simply don't have the emotional heft of the live action ones.
The development of the plot was bolted together and felt more than a bit clumsy, with some crazy inconsistencies that call all sorts of things in the whole saga into question retrospectively. If Finn and Rey can go to the Monaco planet in a couple of hours, shouldn't the Resistance be sending people there to engage assistance from all those weapons dealers. And you can execute pre-FTL ramming manoeuvres? Uh, that changes a few things.
Anyway, it may be too much to expect perfection. Given how increasingly unwieldy the setting is, this was about as successful and coherent as any future Star Wars film is ever likely to be. It was fun to see Mark Hamill acting the part of an old gunslinger, and despite criticisms of their acting, Driver and Ridley were fine. Also, though I'm not a huge fan of Carrie Fisher, it was genuinely touching to see her in a final, coherent and respectable role as Leia. Rest in peace.
[/spoiler]
