Okay at best

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2001)

It's sad that out of all the people that pitch movies to production executives, the ones that get made are generally storylines that are incredibly predictable and boring. When I saw that they were making a prequel to Star Wars I expected great things. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, but I enjoy a great film, so I decided to see it.
Unfortunately, I found it like most of the new movies I end up seeing- predictable and boring. I felt they spent too much time at Tatooine, and too much time with the pod racing. I feel as if I need a trademarked or copyright after pod racing since the whole marketing plan of the film was based off of this sequence. Everywhere I turned in a store was pod racing this and pod racing that.
My largest complaint is the fact that the whole movie was done on a computer. Computer generated graphics to enhance a fighting scene or an explosion is one thing, but to use computers to generate whole scenes and characters is not right.
I think the film would've been much more effective if they shot it with a little more than the story of Star Wars in mind. They should've used the filming techniques like they did when filming Star Wars, using their wits instead of a computer. For example, filming the flights passed the Death Star was done by building many, many model battleships together and driving by with a camera. The point I am getting at is that putting the prequel next to the original looks funny.
The Phantom Menace was okay at best. It was not a "wait in line for weeks to see it" good (no film is that good anyway), but it was a decent movie. It barely held my interest, especially during the pod racing scene. I found little entertainment in it, I found the most entertainment in the light saber scene with Darth Maul at the end. It was an okay film, nothing to brag about, but nothing to put down either.