Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (18 May 1999)

I read all of the reviews, and I totally disbelieved them. I wanted to love this movie, I wanted to, so badly...
And instead, I got a film that only manages to achieve adequacy only because of my already-existing relationship with the characters.
Each Star Wars movie preceding (and hopefully succeeding) The Phantom Menace contains a snappy, memorable line in each scene. TPM, on the other hand, has one or two such lines at the most. To boot, there are a number of truly awful lines. The actors themselves do fairly good jobs, but Lucas doesn't ask them emote in any way (with the exception of the final lightsaber duel, which is an example of classic, old-style Lucas magic). I know, I sound just like the reviewers... but it's ALL TRUE.
The effects are amazing, and yet somehow uninspiring. The podrace is great, but the ending is contrived. The lightsaber duels are great, but again, the ending to the final one is rather dumb. The ground and space battles, honestly, just suck. Most of the time, you're amazed at the effects themselves, rather than the images being created. ILM should be commended for their achievement in seamlessly integrated digital characters. But, honestly, you have to expect that for 250 million dollars.
The movie is good-to-okay for Star Wars fans, and fairly abysmal to the uninitiated (unless they happen to be 10 years old). The opening scenes are really, really bad. It gets better, until the final space battle, when it resumes crappiness (basically bad writing, bad directing).
I'm sorry, truly sorry, but against all odds, I found it to be poorly written and poorly directed. Let's hope for the best with Episode 2, which (and I hate to say use this as an optimistic comment) won't be directed by Lucas, who seems to have lost his touch.