This could be a great example

Rating: 3/10 (17 December 2005)

I think this could be a great example to movie-makers. They could watch it and be given a real education....on how not to make a movie.
True, it has a few good moments, but rub your eyes and you'll miss them completely. Whilst 'A New Hope' plunged us into the turmoil of interplanetary war and a small band of resistance fighters desperate attempts to fight back at an imperialist empire, 'Phantom Menace' introduces us to a couple of jedi knights who are off to some debate or other. Who on earth wants to go and see a sci-fi film just to watch politics, for crying out loud? Most of the central characters are irritating. There is a boring brat who tells us the best way to combat evil is to do nothing. And as for Jar Jar Binks as 'comic relief', the film already had C-3PO and R2-D2, so why did it need any more comic characters? Besides, those two droids at least served some proper function in the older films, and were kept in the background during serious parts of the story. This film takes commercialism to new lows. It is pretty obvious there are as many types of spaceship and (cartoon-like) aliens as possible in order to churn out as many toys as possible, and the film is full of scenes which are ready-made video/arcade games. The villains in this film lack any real presence. The stuttering robots are just laughable. And Count Dookya? I wonder, if 'A New Hope' had been made years later Grand Moff Tarkin would have been called Baron Froonkensteen. Worth going to see just out of curiosity, but I think only die-hard Star Wars fans will get much out of this.