Great as a film, but just good as a Star Wars film

Rating: 9/10 (13 May 1999)

While Episode I is a feast for the eyes and ears, it feels very cold in comparison to the previous chapters. Though Ewan McGregor has the voice of Alec Guinness down pat, he is not given much to do until late in the movie. Natalie Portman does the best she can, but feels like more of a display for elaborate costumes than anything, and her relationship with Anakin feels very forced from the moment they meet. Jake Lloyd seems to do a better job interacting with the CGI character Watto than he does with any of his human counterparts, and is introduced surprisingly far into the movie. Liam Neeson is the only actor that commands respect, displaying the charisma needed to carry the picture. Unfortunately, it seems most of the time is spent on non-human characters, including WAY too much screen time for Jar Jar Binks, the CGI slapstick comic relief (whose speaking voice borders on unintelligible). Unfortunately Darth Maul is not in the film enough to warrant his large place on the film's poster, nor the prerelease fan base he has already acquired. He remains too much of an enigma, uttering only a mere handful of lines. However, he does make his presence felt in an epic lightsaber battle that makes the fights of the previous films feel as if they are in slow motion by comparison. Though the duel lacks most of the emotional and psychological aspects of the previous films' fights (due to the lack of any sort of dialogue), it becomes almost unbearably tense, and deserves an Oscar for the choreography of the fight movements alone.
Despite the flaws mentioned, the film is still an incredible amount of fun. The pod race sequence is immensely entertaining, even though the outcome is never really in doubt. Many characters from Episodes IV-VI make terrific appearances, cameo or otherwise. Many lines and phrases are lifted from the previous Trilogy and work well. (Hearing Senator Palpatine utter the words "Young Skywalker" is particularly disturbing.) The film does set up Episodes 2 and 3 nicely, but it also makes the film feel somewhat incomplete, since we just don't feel like we've been given enough information, story-wise. Hopefully Episodes 2 and 3 will fill in the holes left at the end of this chapter. Overall, The Phantom Menace is a great filmgoing experience, it just falls that little bit short as a Star Wars experience.