10 YEARS ON.... and actually it's quite good!

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2009)

First time I saw this when it originally came out I along with most people it seems didn't think it was very good and found it hard to understand what was going on. I assumed the fault was with the film now I'm not so sure the fault wasn't with me. I was never the biggest Star Wars fan anyway, I'd seen the original two or three times over the years and never been that impressed but since acquiring all six films on DVD I thought I'd give it a real go again and for the the first time I really enjoyed the original film and started to see what all the fuss was about. So in a short space of time I've watched all three of the original films and then I saw this and it did make a huge difference I could follow the story much better and know who the characters were and more importantly who they would become. Now I think 'The Phantom Menace is a much better film then I had thought, maybe not comparable with the first Star Wars but I found it was much much better than 'Return Of The Jedi' which I thought quite poor in many areas. There is perhaps a little too much emphasis on humour which I agree doesn't always work but on the whole the balance between action, talking and humour is pretty balanced. I think when it first came out the expectation was so high that there was no way it could live up to it, in fact I think the film is very comparable and consistent to the others in the series and in my opinion a big improvement on the last film. (7/10)