A Poorly Made but Still A Relatively Entertaining Movie

Rating: 4/10 (28 December 2015)

I was raised watching Star Wars, and I loved all of them. Unfortunately, they haven't held up too well.
The Phantom Menace has a much better plot than I remember, but some parts I felt were rushed over and could have been further developed, so I ended up confused several times. Also, I felt like the characters were never trying hard enough to actually resolve the conflicts peacefully over just waging war. Sure it's more entertaining, but it wasn't necessarily realistic.
The characters were just average. Nothing special really. The often bad actors made it difficult to really care about any of them because of how fake they felt.
The acting was what really brought this movie down, especially with Jake Lloyd's performance. Now you may say "Well he's a child actor so it can be excused" but I've seen a fair amount of good child actors in my day and this certainly isn't one. I understand if the kids aren't important to the movie then sure, get some actors who don't know the first thing about it because they're not important. But when they're pretty much the main character then you have to try a little harder. Lloyd's performance was quite bad, which made his character end up feeling more fake. He wasn't the only bad actor though, a lot of other secondary characters weren't so talented either.
The writing isn't the best. Some of the lines the actors were given were pretty cheesy or stupid, and made the characters just appear goofy or unrealistic.
The special effects are pretty bad sometimes. At some points it looks fine because everything else is CGI too so it all just blends together, but when you put CGI Jar Jar Binks next to real Liam Neeson it really stands out as clearly fake, which would obviously take you out of the movie.
A lot of the time I found myself wondering 'why?' throughout the movie. Why is that there? Why would you do that? Some things just didn't make sense. I could think of absolutely no reason why it exists, so why does it? What purpose could a row of red laser doors that automatically open for two seconds before closing for thirty seconds possibly serve? I don't know, but it really bothered me sometimes.
The continuity is somewhat lacking at times too. This is just a small thing, but I still noticed it and it still got on my nerves.
One thing that I did really like were the designs of the pods in the pod race. They actually made sense while still maintaining uniqueness. Unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn't follow through with that level of originality.
Overall The Phantom Menace really is a below average movie. Despite enjoying parts of it, it really just isn't a well-done movie. In the end I would only recommend it to people wanting to watch the next two movies, because it is somewhat important to the story. I just hope that the next two movies hold up better than this one did.