Worse than Phantom Menace, save yourselves the pain!

Rating: 2/10 (17 December 2015)

Seriously, the only reason I give it two stars is because it's Star Wars, and it has Ewan McGregor and Christopher Lee in it. There are practically no other high points for me. I don't think I need to describe the plot in much detail, but many consider this better than Phantom Menace, so let me briefly expand on why - for me - it was worse.
Phantom Menace was boring as hell, granted. But even with Jar Jar in there, it never once made me cringe in horror. By god, this one did. The movie doesn't contribute much to the story line, other than that Padme and Anakin fall in love (rather unconvincingly at that). Again, Lucas' complete inability to write dialogue comes into play, but with romantic scenes, this is so much more apparent than during trade negotiations. It's so bad, I cannot begin to tell you how bad it is. The "romantic scenes" between the two leads are so unconvincing, so stilted, borderline creepy at times and at best will make you snigger. At worst, it makes you cringe with embarrassment-by-proxy. This is the only one of the Star Wars movies that I could never bring myself to watch a second time. Granted, the romance does not take up all of the screen time. Far from it. And I understand why many people would find the rest of the story, the origin of the stormtroopers etc. more engaging than Phantom Menace. For me, however, the story is just as uninteresting as Phantom Menace, with the added horror of the corny dialogue. The battle scene at the end, rather than looking cool, left me cold. The screen is overcrammed, the stakes are virtually nonexistent since you know the important characters will live and you don't care about the characters anyway. For me, this is the lowest point in the Saga. I understand that proper Star Wars geeks will have to watch it, but everyone else might as well save themselves the pain.