Good, but not up there with the original trilogy.

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 1999)

I'm a huge fan of the original trilogy, so perhaps I had too-big of expectations for this film. I thought that overall the special effects were pretty darn good, but the computer-generated characters weren't the best. I think part of the charm and general appeal of the original trilogy was the 'puppet-like' characters that were still realistic. Just about every non-human character in this film were blatantly computer-generated, which I find tacky. CGI for special effects is one thing, but for actual characters, that's just wrong.
Then there's the humour... again, perhaps I'm simply biased. I'm sorry, but I don't think Star Wars should be a comedy, yet, the sports announcer, Jar-Jar, the Gungin...king(?), were clearly put there for comic relief. I just think they're out of place.
And speaking of Jar-Jar, well, let's not, same goes with little Annikin.
Darth Maul had the potential of being a great character, but we hardly saw him! There was absolutely no character development here.
The plot, at least, was decent, but the things above, as well as the dialogue in some places, distracted me from that, it would seem.
All in all, despite my complaints, it's a fairly-good movie if you either think of it as "simply setting the stage for things to come", or not a part of the Star Wars series.
But that's just my two cents.