A little comparison...

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2002)

I watched this on DVD and afterwards I broke out my DVD of "2001: A Space Odyssey." I noticed something right off when I compared the two: because "2001" was made using spaceship models, rather than CGI, the scenes looked very real, unlike the shiny, hokey SFX of TPM.
Also, I really cared about the people in "2001," particularly the astronauts Bowman and Poole. I even felt sorry for the HAL9000, which went off the rails from trying to suppress the truth about the mission. But I found as I watched TPM that I simply couldn't bring myself to give a hang about ANY of the characters. It's pretty bad when Jar-Jar Binks is the most fully realized character in the film, and he isn't even real.
Let me add that TPM was such a stomach turning experience for me that I had to stop watching it every so often and do something else. Lucas truly tripped over his computer with this one.