[DJ's left nut]

Non specific things I liked about this movie:

The humor - some people clearly hated it. I think it fit the tone of the series quite well. Star wars humor was generally just an Nth above pies to the face as it is. There were actually some really dry, almost laconic bits of humor throughout this. And while I think they overused the 'Hux as a slapstick rube' comic-device something awful by the end, it was damn funny early in the movie. I didn't find it distracting and by the end, as disappointment set in, it was one of the few things that gave brought me back into the movie.

Adam Driver and Ren's development - again, a lot of people dislike Driver almost as much as they dislike Kylo Ren. I think Johnson actually did a lot to dispel the emo Darth complaints of the first movie here. He gave Ren some pretty incredible character moments throughout. We got a great glimpse into his past and he assumed the mantle as the clear baddy which will pay dividends going forward and allow him to be a truly sinister figure. As for Driver - dude's main strength is emoting and it's pretty obvious why they had him destroy his mask. They wanted the audience to see his face so they could take advantage of that strength (even if it was 'scene chewing' in a lot of ways -
again, subtle acting hasn't really been a thing in the Star Wars series apart from Alec Guiness) and frankly, as a character he's coming into his own so he doesn't feel the need to emulate Vader anymore.

Um.....not much else. Some individual moments here and there were visually stunning (kamikazee sequence was mind-blowing) and certain scenes had entertainment value in their own right without being part of a greater whole, IMO (the throne room scene).

Like I said - this movie isn't objectively bad like any of the prequels. It's just not very good either. At least not in a holistic way. As a series of occasionally entertaining vignettes it wouldn't have been bad, but it just never pulled itself together into as good a move as it should have been.