An unintentional parody of the entire Star Wars franchise...

Rating: 2/10 (17 September 2015)

Alright. This film has been reviled and excoriated for the humongous disappointed it was, yet it nearly works well as parody...really. A few more unintentional gaffes by George Lucas would have made this film a total hoot, throughout. The Stepin Fetchit of the Star Wars universe, Jar Jar Binks, was probably the ONLY intentional 'comic relief' that director, George Lucas, set out to provide, but there was oh-so-much more.
Let's not forget the frog-faced ambassadors (Asian accent stereotypes), Watto (Jewish), stone-faced Princess Amidala (frigid, were we?), and the poor pathetic little bratty young Anakin Skywalker, played by Jake Lloyd, perhaps the sorriest bit of casting in recent memory. There were aliens with bizarre facial and other bodily appendages (phallic inside jokes?) as well as a wasted performance by Liam Neeson and a NON-performance by Samuel L. Jackson, who seemed to have left his mojo elsewhere. As Mace Windu (WTF?), he is a non-presence and a non-factor in the story and many other 'nons'. Now, he's just a corporate shill for Capital One, a further acknowledgment of Samuel L's descent into 'uncool'.
One final note: The story. What in the blue-eyed world made George Lucas inflict this convoluted nonsense upon an ultra-eager fan base? Space politics is just like present-day politics...convoluted nonsense. Imagine if it were taken to new heights of obfuscation and used to a 'wink, wink' effect? Now THAT would have been comedy gold! For further proof that this could have worked, check out how Rifftrax laid waste to this cinematic train wreck to see how "Phantom Menace" could have been the space comedy of all space comedies; instead, this film stands as a testament to lost hopes, dreams, innocence, etc. ...