Agreed. There were some really nice shots but overall the film just lurches.
Honestly, I feel it's the action beats. I get that people are tuning in to Star Wars for big dumb laser explosions in space but this was a spin-off. Here's the chance to do something. Instead, we have more big dumb laser explosions in space and zero characterization. The entire Beaches of Normandy sequence just ran on for so long and tried to make so many banal things high tension (retrieving a file from a filing cabinet, running an extension cord to a power outlet and the ever so intense pulling a switch) that any moment that could possibly be used to contextualize, humanize or characterize the actors in the drama was sped up.
I mean, from the very start why did Jyn's mother run back to threaten the villain in the cornfield? I mean, I can come up with a plausible explanation. She was a diehard believer in the rebellion and the Jedi religion and convinced her husband to abandon his super evil death laser project for the good of humanity. Now, given the opportunity, she seized at the moment to prevent the development of the Space Manhattan Project.
But, I mean, even running with this explanation, I don't know why she didn't try to shoot her husband. Killing the villain is meaningless. It's not like he's a scientist. He's just a pushy boss. And there's five or whatever stormtroopers standing in the field. They can (and did) simply shoot her and whisk her husband away. We can't even argue that it was a poor decision made in the heat of the moment because she had ran halfway to the safehouse before patting her child on the bum and shooing her off in order to run pointlessly into death while accomplishing nothing. Not to mention that her death isn't even justified in a narrative perspective because Jyn never really cared her mother died. She was just upset her father disappeared/abandoned her/whatever.
I'd write this off as a nitpick but every single character runs into these sorts of problems throughout the movie. Hell, it seemed weird they had to run after Mads despite Jyn already being told what the weakness for the Deathstar was. Granted, we know they needed schematics simply because A New Hope already exists. But if Mads lab hadn't inexplicably completely blown up, surely they could have salvaged that and skipped the final ending?
I agree that Tarkin's CGI was really distracting too. Also, is any other character as obsessed with "test running" their new weapon as Tarkin? First Space Jerusalem, then Space Normandy then Alderaan. Apparently he really needs a lot of trial runs for the Deathstar.
(The inconsistencies with A New Hope do really irk me though. There isn't any good explanation for the blockade runner. Vader pressing Leia about "intercepting transmission" is misleading now. She was physically handed a disk. Leia being so shocked by the Deathstar's capabilities despite seeing just a taste of it in action in person while also knowing that it can destroy planets...)