At best, an average film

Rating: 7/10 (13 June 2000)

I ended up seeing this film three times primarily because my husband is a big star wars fan. When I initially read the reviews last year, I was bracing myself for a horrible experience.
Truthfully, the film is NOT bad. It's not all that great either. The movie certainly didn't live up to the obscene amount of hype it received. I really hope that Lucas wakes up and gets a clue and does not allow the second film to be hyped this much.
The best description of this film is AVERAGE. It's got great special effects, wonderfully choreographed fight scenes, a passable story, the acting is fine, the characters have potential and it is fun. However, it could have been so much better. The biggest element missing to this film is "heart".
It feels really mundane and churned out in so many ways. There's really not a lot of imagination or creativity to it. The actors are treated like cardboard cutouts which is a shame since they could be so exciting and the actors have the potential to bring good performances.
George Lucas really also needs to work on the awful, truly banal dialogue. Some of it made me cringe. Certain parts were a little bit unbelievable as well - the Anakin character was way too young - how believable is it to have an 8 year old pilot like this and have any romantic notions at all? The clorimiridians and the "Jesus" immaculate conception reference is flat out weird and unnecessary.
And Jar Jar stinks. It's like Lucas went to the viewers and said "Here, (PLOP) is your comedy relief". There is no cleverness to this character at all and he is stupid even to young kids. For clever comedy relief, look at the banter between R2D2 and C3PO in the first films.
I really hope EP2 is a lot better. It has to be at this point with all of the attention paid to these films. Star Wars should not just be a kids movie - it should be for both kids and adults like truly good films are.
There's my two cents - I'm sure I've repeated what others have said but adding more in never hurts!