Piece of utter crap

Rating: 1/10 (25 May 2000)

More or less everything worthwhile in The Phantom Menace can be attributed to the cinematographer. In addition, the computer effects are clearly impressive, and whoever choreographed the fight scenes gets some props too. However, don't let its staunch defenders fool you -- nothing else is any good at all. The characters are trite and undeveloped, the acting is unremarkable to poor, and the dramatic arc is nonexistent. It felt to me like the movie was still just beginning until half way through the final sequence -- nothing that felt like a plot had happened yet, so I had assumed that the real action was yet to begin. In addition, many plot and character decisions are totally disloyal to the original series. I will elaborate below, but DO NOT READ FURTHER if you don't want anything given away.
Jar Jar is more or less the most insulting character I have ever seen on screen. He only exists to be laughed at. Children can appreciate a substantive comic relief character, as C3PO and R2, not to mention Sebastian (from The Little Mermaid) and any of several other Disney characters, demonstrate. However, Jar Jar was not one. His only personality was of a "look how stupid I am" variety; the only way to relate to him is "look how stupid he is". I certainly don't need my little sister thinking that's a useful way to relate to people.
Just about every invocation of the powerful, resonant images from the original series is compromised. The force is changed from a mystical, magical idea that captivated my entire generation, to a kind of microbe. Anakin is given a virgin birth, making his fated status absurdly heavy-handed. Yoda, full of real wisdom in The Empire Strikes Back ("No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."), is reduced to canned and vaguely fascist sloganeering ("Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."). The movie's publicity would have us believe that it foreshadows Anakin's descent to the dark side and eventual transformation into Darth Vader, but except for some Vader- breathing at the end of the credits, this is completely absent. Nothing in Anakin's character foreshadows Darth Vader in any way: the boy is headstrong, but so was Luke; the Jedi council says he's full of fear, but nowhere in the original trilogy do we find indication that Darth Vader's fall was through fear.
Darth Maul may be cool-looking, but he's completely substanceless. He's on screen for two seconds, says a total of about twenty words, and generally has nothing that puts him in the same league with Vader. He fights with a cool double light-saber, but that is all.
The movie has no story. It wasn't until Qui-Gonn died that I realized that the final battle was in progress. This is because the movie is entirely lacking a dramatic structure. There is some meandering action as the Jedis escape the trade federation and pick up Jar Jar on Naboo before heading to Tatooine; then there is meandering action on Tatooine as the Jedis find Anakin and watch him win a pod race; then there is a cool-looking but contextless scene in the Imperial senate; then there is a final battle. I was still waiting for the story to get started when the final battle began. It wasn't until a main character died that it occurred to me that the film might be nearing its end.
The film is also politically objectionable on several counts. As has been noted frequently, several characters (especially the representatives of the trade federation and Jar Jar Binks) fit problematic racial and ethnic stereotypes. More importantly, I think, is the way that the film portrays entire alien races as having a species-specific character, as though they were created with racial personality cookie-cutters; hence, the Hutts are gangsters, while the Gungans are clownish, petty and stupid. The scene in which the Gungan leader is bought off by the false deference of Queen Amidala and her (almost all-white) entourage smacks of the European colonialists's scorn for the peoples they colonized.