Why do I sense we've picked up another pathetic lifeform?

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 1999)

Phantom Menace was not nearly the cinematic mastery that I have come to know and love from Lucas. I just could not care about any of the characters, save Boss Nass. When Light or Dark Jedi die in this movie, I could care less. There is no sense of rhythm to it. When Obi-Wan buys the farm in A New Hope, and Yoda becomes stronger than you can ever imagine in Return of the Jedi, there is a sense of rhythm there. Were it not for the wizardry that ILM has demonstrated time and time again, I could barely justify rating above a 5 for this movie.
Ray Park was absolutely brilliant. Ewan McGregor was excellent in his emulation of Alec Guinness. Liam Neeson was incredible as always. That having been said, Boss Nass, Fode-Beed, Sebulba, and Watto were much more entertaining, and just think: they weren't even there.
I felt absolutely insulted when I saw Jar-Jar come on screen. Without the negative promotion for this pathetic lifeform, Jar-Jar is an insult to all of those who found humor in the original trilogy. His lines are cheap, over used, cliche at best, and positively grating on the nerves. I feel that R2 and 3PO offered a much more witty comic relief than "exsqueese me" and the painful imitation of Roger Rabbit.
It is my hope that Lucas will use a little more than the usual Star Wars gimmicks to pull off Episode 2. As far as the fairy tale or bedtime story effect of the Star Wars saga goes, this would be the one story that I would fall asleep after about 3 minutes, and grow up not really caring about what happened in it.