It's Bad, and Lucas has No One to Blame but Himself.

Rating: 2/10 (17 June 1999)

Juvenile, clumsy, self-referential, self-congratulatory, overly sentimental, heavy handed, and completely lacking in mystery, majesty, and romance...Unfortunately these words apply to George Lucas' latest installment of the Star Wars series, The Phantom Menace. There is little menace: the most threatening character, Darth Maul, appears in very little of the movie and only at predictable moments and threatens only the two Jedi at the center of this story--if one can call it that. Since one of the Jedi is Obi-Wan, we know harm will come to him, leaving only the question of when the other Jedi, Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn, will meet his end. There is no phantom (even if you are incapable of recognizing the thinly disguised voice of the future evil Emperor and have forgotten the story line of the first three Star Wars installments) because director/writer Lucas all but tells you who the Phantom Menace is in the penultimate scene with a contrived discussion of the pair-wise nature of evil Siths and a finger-pointing close-up.
The story itself is basically an uninspired recycle of the original Star Wars movie (with a few light saber scenes from ESB and RoJ). There is a desperate attack by out gunned one-manned, one-R2'ed fighters against a formidable space ship (which incidentally looks like a small Death Star wrapped in a partially eaten doughnut), a young Jedi is brutally left to fend for himself, and light sabers clash in towering darkly lit power shafts. As in the original, a planet's future is at risk, the good guys face a dark force wielding henchman, a young male is rescued from obscurity on Tatooine and later attacks the aforementioned Death Doughnut, and a spunky royal female with outrageous hair styles acts tough.
One could forgive re-using a successful formula, but Lucas ruins a good plot line by removing any shred of plausibility from this version: the young Anakin Skywalker is barely old enough to walk on two legs let along in the sky, and his secret origin is just to much to take. Queen Amidala is barely old enough to baby-sit and it is hard to believe that she knows more about strategy and tactics than her generals. To add insult to injury, Lucas replaces the witty repartee between R2D2 and C3PO that provided the comic relief in the first series with the klutzy bumblings of a juvenile slapstick fool who is far from lovable and who contributes nothing to the plot unlike the famous robotic pair. The final nail in the coffin is the simplistic and juvenile dialog and, aside from Neeson, Ewan McGregor, and Yoda, extremely poor acting.
The only consistently good aspects of the movie are the sets and 'droid designs, but even these are not fully exploited to set a mood or an ambiance. Lucas has apparently forgotten what made his earlier movies great: a story full of romance and adventure with characters we could relate to and cheer for.