Not as good as the first three, but worth seeing

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2002)

Phantom Menace is a very entertaining movie with excellent special effects, but failed to live up to the expectations generated by the first three Star Wars films.
In my opinion, the two things that caused the greatest harm to this movie were 1) Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker and 2) the character Jar Jar Binks. The first Harry Potter movie demonstrated that there are many very good child actors, so why couldn't George Lucas pick a good child actor to portray Anakin Skywalker? The character Jar Jar Binks sounds like a Jamaican wannabe reject that may appeal to some children, but definitely has no adult appeal whatsoever.
Though I was very disappointed to find out that the next Star Wars installment "Attack of the Clones" includes Jar Jar Binks again, at least Jake Lloyd couldn't grow up fast enough to portray an older Anakin Skywalker. Hopefully it will be a much better film than Phantom Menace.
My advice: see Phantom Menace, but do your best to ignore Jake Lloyd's poor acting and Jar Jar Binks' bad Jamaican accent.