It was very good, unlike what I had heard

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2015)

It is now 2014 and I finally got to watch both Episode I and Episode II, during a weekend visit to some friends. Since the 3 prequels were released (I believe Episode III was in 2005) I have heard a lot of bad comments for the movies and Lucas specifically. That all he is after is money and franchising, bad director, bad writer and the like.
When you expect less, you get more out of it. That is a rule of life. And perhaps this is the reason I enjoyed Episode II so much. Or, more precise, one of the reasons.
The other reasons are that it fully immerses you into another world. This is imperative for a movie. I would go as far as saying that movies *are* immersion, above all other things. So this one, in my book, is a successful movie. You do get the feeling of watching a world similar to ours, but orders of magnitude bigger, were countries have been replaced by planets and nations by species. And they, too, have their problems. Politics, war, greed. The political and social references of the movie are not to be taken lightly. They were well thought out and make this movie enjoyable to watch by adults as well.
Technically the movie looks fantastic, the plot feels realistic and the dialogs are good. The dialogs have seldom something smart in them, but they work. I would expect a little more humor and punchlines, but anyway, I suppose dialogs are not the strong part of the movie.
I could go on for hours but its late. All I want to end up with is that the movie is immersive, has good plot, decent dialogs and does not stall much, at least much less than Episode I.
The one thing I did not like and God I don't know how they allowed it to happen, is that Anakin simply can not act.