It's really a good movie, but....

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 1999)

I graded this movie on two levels: writing/character development, and special effects.
1) Special Effects: a solid 10 (okay, "off the scale"). Making a computer-animated character one of the main supporting characters...and pulling it off well, visually...certainly is deserving of high marks.
2) Writing/Character Development: a 5, maybe a 6. On my first viewing, I couldn't connect with any of the characters. Qui-Gon Jinn seemed too "focused on his mission" to draw me into liking him. Even the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, who at times exhibited the likability we saw in his first :60 seconds on-screen in Episode IV, seemed distant and unreachable. I felt pretty much the same way after the second viewing.
To be fair, when I saw the original Star Wars three months after it opened in 1977, I wasn't thrilled (as I had been told I *would* be for three months). But it did grow on me over time and I hold that trilogy in quite high esteem now.
Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, I give The Phantom Menace an 8.