I really dislike the trend of material "inspired" designs that seem to obscure functionality in the name of aesthetics. Things like hiding buttons and input fields as (minimally styled) text on plain backgrounds, or screwing with scroll behavior drive me nuts.
On the other hand, I do like the occasional, subtle, animation that makes the interface feel like something with a bit more substance and interactivity than usual. The little ripple animations on touch are a good example of pleasant eyecandy that adds a bit of, for lack of a better phrase, emotional appeal.
Sliding/scaling/etc. dropdowns, sidebars, and menus that move around to indicate where they came from and are going to are fine and useful, but that's hardly unique to material.
"I just don't get it" sums up my thoughts on a lot of Material Design. Here's an example from just this morning, where I wanted to sign up for Netlify News: https://www.netlify.com/news/
There's a form near the bottom of page, but it's very, very easy to miss because it implements Material Design-inspired input fields. And thought this is a DIY implementation, the 'official' version is highly similar: https://material.angularjs.org/latest/demo/input
For me, no animation or clever UX in the world is worth actually hiding the input a user is looking to use.
That said, I do like flat designs. I've recently moved from Android to iOS and I'm really enjoying the UI. Although it is a flat design, it does have accents and details.
Material design just looks like something half-baked to me: I can't drop the feeling that there is way too much white space.
agreed, feels like fist-sized crayons and picture books to me. too much scrolling, too much affectation, too much grey-on-white and too much padding and white space.
If done right, it makes the interface feel fluid and alive rather than just click and appear.
Whether or not you like that is personal preference.