It's really hard to put my feelings about this movie into words... I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of rambling. But I'll try.



Plot: It's a few minutes after the last movie ended -- and the resistance is being chased by a big bad guy ship! They are chased until they run out of gas (and, yes, that is really the main plot of the movie) while the most important characters either a) do things that make no sense, b) do embarrassing things, and c) are not on screen. 
So -- first of all, you might do a refresher on what I thought about Star Wars: The Force Awakens . That's a lengthy two-parter that goes into great detail about what I thought were the main flaws of that film -- namely, misused characters and missed opportunities (story-wise). Not a terrible experience -- just kind of a shrug of the shoulders, and "maybe the next one will be better."
Well, this one has misused characters. And it has missed-opportunities. AND IT WAS PRETTY MUCH A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

-A-NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: TERRIBLE COMEDY-

Pretty much the first thing you notice when you're watching this movie is that they are suddenly trying to fill it with really awkward, out-of place comedy. Seen Guardians of the Galaxy? Apparently, because Disney owns both properties, they think there should be consistent humor throughout. This is clearly a big error on their part. There is a truly cringe-worthy bit of "humor" when the movie opens, with Poe basically prank-calling the leader of the evil empire. The tone of this movie is off from beginning to end.
- MORE POINTLESS NEW CHARACTERS-

Rose
The brand new character that nobody asked for and nobody wants now that she got here!


A new character who is oh-so-important to the story. But is she? Rose is a security person aboard the resistance ship, befriends Finn, and goes off on a really stupid, poorly-thought out adventure that involves going to a casino planet and releasing all the racehorses that are abused there so that they can smash up the casino. (And finding a "master code breaker" who can do something-something on the bad guy ship.) The consensus among the reviewers seems to be that the "Rose/Finn" adventure felt really unnecessary to the story (many have said that it felt like a lame, stand-alone adventure from the cartoon show The Clone Wars), was not entertaining, and was enjoyed by no one.

Rose was given a very touching message at the end about how we're going to win this war not by hurting the ones we hate, but by saving the ones we love... which doesn't really make a lot of sense and actively risks other's peoples lives in the way she acted out this moral.

So, sorry Rose. But don't come back.

Benicio Del Toro
I forget what his character's name was, but it doesn't really matter.


He was essentially a cheap device to move the plot along from point A to point B (although, in this case, it just moves from point A to point A), and didn't have a character arc. He told them when they met up that he was a mercenary who just sides with whomever is winning -- and then they are surprised when he turns out to be a mercenary who sides with whomever is winning. He learns no lessons and experiences no personal growth -- and has no memorable dialogue.

Laura Dern
Her character Mondo Bobba (or whatever her name is; it really doesn't matter) also doesn't have much of an arc. Although she does have one of the ugliest dresses in the entire galaxy. "I am good strong woman character! I tell people what to do and I take no sass from da man!"

I honestly thought she was brought in to replace Carrie Fisher (after...you know) and most of the time it does feel like she's just subbing for Leia, who spends most of the movie out of commission. I really don't know why she was in this movie if it wasn't to sub for Carrie Fisher... Honestly, it would have been more interesting and meaningful if everything Laura Dern did in this film was done by either Leia, Admiral Akbar, Nien Nunb, or...

Lando Calrissian
This is the one good part of this movie; the part I really cared about. We discover, when Finn and Rose arrive on the casino planet, that Lando Calrissian has gone rogue and runs this casino for creeps and war profiteers. He is reluctantly pulled back into the struggle against the new bad guys -- and then bravely sacrifices himself for the good of his friends.


JUST KIDDING! HE'S NOT IN THIS MOVIE! (In spite of the fact there were about twenty places where he easily would have fit in -- including completely replacing Laura Dern's character. Clashes between ultra-cool Billy Dee and hothead Poe Dameron would have been much more interesting than the vague, boring, "Strong Woman Want to be in Charge vs. Hothead Man Want to be in Charge" discussions between Dern and Poe. For that matter, he could have replaced Benicio De Toro's character, too! They come across him in the prison on the casino planet, he promises them he can do the code-breaking -- he can't, of course, and he betrays them. BETRAYED BY LANDO?! SHOCK! HORROR! But not without precedent and at least I would have felt something -- something apart from vague annoyance and boredom, I mean.)

- Previously New Characters, Also Wasted -

FinnRemember how I previously mentioned that Finn was the best new character?



He has the most opportunity for inner turmoil and fish-out-of-water scenarios (he was stolen as a baby and raised to be more or less a cog in the bad-guy machine, never even had a name). However, in this movie (as in the last) he's a pretty sociable guy and pretty emotionally-well adjusted. HE OUGHT TO HAVE PROBLEMS AND COMPLEXES UP THE WAZOO, not to mention ought to be as socially awkward as all-get-out. Any opportunities for exploring his history and psyche problems are simply ignored in favor of the incredibly stupid and annoying "Finn and Rose go on an adventure!" plot. (And aside from that -- wouldn't it have been more interesting if Finn and his new best friend Poe Dameron went on an adventure? One would think. They could have some good comic banter, between cowardly man and not-cowardly-hothead man). But what do I know? We clearly need more Strong Woman Characters, because there are only about twenty of them in this movie...!

ReyRemember how I previously mentioned that it would be creative if, instead of being Obi-Wan's granddaughter or whatever they had in mind, they had made Rey just "a random person"? WELL, THEY DID. And I would be fine with that, if they hadn't done it like this (paraphrasing, but only slightly):
Kylo Ren: "I saw your parents [via The Force]. And you know what? They're nobodies and they're dead, so you, like, don't even belong in this story because only Skywalkers get to be lead characters in Star Wars."
The problem with the above (aside from what a hamfisted and out-of-place bit of dialogue it was, even in its un-paraphrased version) is that Rey was never before really concerned with who her parents were until all of a sudden in this movie -- she knew who her parents were; i.e. THEY WERE HER PARENTS. Rey was never concerned about whether she was secretly Obi-Wan Kenobi's granddaughter or Luke's daughter -- that was something FANS were concerned about. She was only concerned about, a) Where are my parents? b) Are they coming back? c) Why did they leave me in the first place? So, the way this revelation was phrased was basically a big middle-finger to the fans. "You know all those theories you had about who Rey might be? She's nobody. And so are you! Keep throwing your money at us, idiots!"

That's what I have a problem with. I also continue to have a problem with how ridiculously easy it is for Rey to use The Force.

Snoke
Remember how I said Snoke was stupid and there was no point for him to be in the movie?

 
Well, apparently somebody read my review, because they solved that problem in the dumbest way possible -- he's easily killed and that's the end of his story. THE END. Yes, granted he was dumb in the first place -- but they could at least have come up with a creative, legitimate reason for him to be around. Heck, even an un-creative explanation would have been better than what we got -- just go with the fan theory that he was Darth Plagueis. Nope! It's like the writers for the first movie left a bunch of things open-ended, hoping the writer for the second movie would work them in a satisfactory fashion -- but they didn't. NO, anything that was hard to resolve (Rey's parentage or the "Who is Snoke?" conundrum) was left completely left unresolved. "Screw you, Star Wars fans! We never liked you anyway!"
Leia
For the first time in a Star Wars movie, we get to see Princess Leia use The Force! After her space ship is damaged, her Force finally awakens so that she can save all the other people who had been blasted out of the ship, grandly sacrificing herself in the process.

JUST KIDDING! She uses her force powers to save herself and lets everyone else die. Not even joking about that. You know, Leia is just another example of a wasted possibility in these movies.

Chewbacca and the Droids
...Serve no purpose in this story.

Luke
Luke is kind of complicated. The first moment he's on the screen -- more of that awkward, out-of-place humor -- very painful. (And I'm not saying that Luke became like Yoda was in the original trilogy -- that would have been fun. No, just some comedy stuff that doesn't even make sense with the type of character that Luke is supposed to be). Then, sulking and grumping; I complain about that less than the comedy, as at least it was consistent with what they were going for -- but they failed to achieve anything satisfactory.


Then, more out-of-place humor. There was one good thing that came out of Luke Skywalker... that he said what the Jedi did in the prequels was nonsense. The rest of his appearance in the movie was unsatisfactory in a not-thoroughly-thought-out way.
 - THE STORY -
The story was really, really poorly written. I've talked already about the tone issues, and the overabundance of characters (both old, slightly new and new). The main story, as I said, is about the evil guys waiting for the good guys to run out of gas -- which is exactly as thrilling as it sounds. The rest of the story is a) unnecessary, forced conflict between characters (the type of thing that could be resolved by one person just explaining themselves with one sentence), b) Finn and Rose's stupid casino adventure, and c) Rey learning nothing from Luke and discovering everything she needs to know to advance the plot without his help. (And that plot, which was the most interesting part of the film, was the smallest part of the film). It's like they took many of the complaints against The Force Awakens and then tried to pick the single most unsatisfactory way to resolve all of those complaints -- ways that would just upset fans and confuse and irritate your casual movie goer.

- THE ENDING (**Spoilers!!**) -
There were three pieces, in a row, of the Luke Skywalker resolution to this movie that made no sense -- in a "this seems like a plot-hole created by a re-write, re-film" type situation. I'm not going to talk about those. I'm going to talk about the very end of the film, where a bunch of abused stable boys on the casino planet are talking about Luke Skywalker and playing -- and then one of them uses the force to move a broom.

 
This ending seemed horrendously out of place. Some friends said it seemed like a "Hallmark" ending. My own statement, immediately after seeing the movie, was that it felt more like the ending of the last ever Star Wars movie -- the sort of thing that just feels like the authors are saying, "The main story is over, folks, but the universe of Star Wars lives on!" Why include a moment like that? IT MAKES NO SENSE. Unless (and several people posited this) they are setting up a resolution to the third movie where everyone in the universe can now use The Force, and they use it to take down the bad guys. The thing that confuses me about this is how anyone on earth would think that was a satisfactory ending to Star Wars. Everybody being able to use The Force would make the use of said Force cheap and uninteresting. If this is what they are building up to -- I sincerely hope they abandon that idea.


- ULTIMATELY -

Now, there were some people who liked this movie. The people who I've talked to who liked this movie seem to all be saying the same thing; "I liked it because it surprised me!" "It really subverted my expectations!" ... I don't get this. Just because the movie did things you didn't expect isn't a reason to like it. For instance; there is one point when Luke Skywalker walks up to a seated creature with big, disgusting boobs and squeezes them to squirt out some green milk into a bowl which he immediately and revoltingly drinks. (I am not kidding. This actually happens in the film). I NEVER EXPECTED LUKE SKYWALKER TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT. This does not make it a good thing. 
Another example: if I were to step out of my bedroom and immediately get smacked in the head with a hammer by an intruder, I would not then exclaim, "Wow! I really enjoyed getting hit in the head with a hammer! I didn't expect it at all -- really subverted my expectations of how the day was going to go!" JUST BEING A SURPRISE DOESN'T MAKE SOMETHING GOOD. I was surprised the movie was an uneven mess that wasted my time -- and that is not a good surprise. The faults of The Force Awakens were supposed to be redeemed by this movie -- they were not. So, not only did this movie fail, it also took down the movie before it by several notches.  NOT RECOMMENDED