Far better than it's made out to be

Rating: Null/10 (29 December 2014)

They were a few aspects of it that I really intensely disliked (chief among the racial caricatures, perhaps the most blatant of which is the Neimodians' "Engrish" manner of speaking) but, on the whole, I felt that the good elements outnumbered the bad ones. The pod race was probably my least favourite extended sequence of the film. Jar Jar didn't jar jar on me (sorry, I had to...) nearly as much as I thought that he would. In fact, I found his accent, another racial caricature there, considerably more annoying than his antics and I actually laughed at him in the manner which George Lucas intended several times.
On the negative side, Jake Lloyd was simply not up to being cast in a major role in a major film. Frankly, he just can't act but I blame George Lucas for casting him as opposed to Lloyd himself. The rest of the cast was better though. Liam Neeson, as ever, made for a strong leading man. Natalie Portman came across well during the scenes in which she played Padmé but less well in her scenes out of disguise. Speaking of which, I love the fact that in spite of her planet being invaded and occupied and her own life being in dire peril, Queen Amidala seemingly brought suitcases full of dozens of elaborate outfits and make up supplies and (when not in disguise) did not hesitate to have her servants change her clothes at least a few times a﻿ day when her people were under attack and starving. Nice to know where her priorities lie! Ewan McGregor's performance came across as unusually flat compared to some of his other roles and I felt that he deserved more screen time.
Although I didn't mind Jar Jar nearly as much as some people, I still think that he could have done with less screen time whereas I wish that Yoda and C-3PO had had more. Ian McDiarmid gave a great performance as the scheming puppet master of the galaxy in both of his personae but the irritating Gungan dialect actually managed to detract from BRIAN BLESSED's sheer awesomeness, insofar as that's possible.
Having recently rewatched the "Star Trek" reboot films, I realised how awful they are, particularly "Into Darkness". It made me truly appreciate for the first time just how disappointed "Star Wars" fans must have felt when it came to the prequels.