It occurs to me I haven't given my thoughts.
This movie needed to overcome the prequels. That's kind of why it mixes up the elements of ANH so strongly...but it does mix them up. Except for one major misstep, which I'll get to, I think it manages to be a homage and yet not derivative. The whole thing seems to hinge on a fighter attack; but the fighters don't actually have the firepower for it and are really a sideshow for the end in terms of screen time. The only reason you can even call it the "I am your father" scene is it's on a catwalk and inside a structure. Rey has grown up on legends of the Force and Jedi, so she kind of Corran Horns her way through it, knowing that she can do certain things but not knowing how to do them. Speaking of which, I get the feeling that despite not making it blatant, they did nod towards the EU a few times. Rey's mind-tricking a stormtrooper felt, in its way, a nod to The Bacta War as I commented. Luke's hideaway, with the islands, the Falcon's landing spot, the stairs, and just the air of it, had me say "this is Jomark" out loud. (Here's hoping that's not Luuke Skywalker.)
Harrison Ford could have turned up to this movie drunk and phoned it in, and I think most people would have been happy. He didn't. He got up there and acted his heart out. He's not carrying this movie on his shoulders, exactly, Daisy Ridley knocked it out of the park too and I don't think anyone actually did badly (the weakest performance, I think, was Finn, but in purely relative terms; he was still solid), but this movie would have been very different and worse without his performance. They kept the kind of light dialogue the original trilogy did so well, and set the tone with setting.
The lighting in this movie was a thing of beauty and I will stab anyone who disagrees.
The only foot I think it put wrong was when they called back to the cantina scene. You open the door, the characters look in, and then suddenly the camera detaches from them and goes walkabout, then hops between shots. The moment they did that was pretty much the only time I think they crossed the line between "homage" and "derivative". If we'd just had the characters walk past all this sort of stuff, I think we could have sustained it in homage, but...
I also think that a lot of people have interpreted the fight between Ren and Rey wrong. She does win, yes, but when she attacks Ren in anger...she's not winning the fight. We watch her struggle and be constantly driven back. It's only there, on the edge, closing her eyes, clearing her mind, reaching for the Force as a Jedi would do, that she takes control of the fight. She won as Obi-Wan would have approved of, not as Vader would have.