Yes, It Is Bad...

Well, a while ago, because of what I was going through at the time, I was surviving on movies and tv. (These days I survive on sleep...) and so I asked for the Star Wars movies from Netflix because I was ready to form my own opinion of them. I have seen most of them in the past, but that was too far back for me actually to remember what the experience was like. Anyway, due to some miscommunication on my part, we eventually sat through The Phantom Menace last night instead of A New Hope.
without further words, although I laugh at the movies too much to consider myself a member of the fandom, that does not deny me the opportunity to say "yes, this one is an embarrassment to the franchise." I only ever bash movies here for some reason, but this one actually deserves it...
"Gungan-talk" is physically painful to sit through.
Jar-Jar was a terrible mistake. He was funny about once for a few seconds in the entire film.
The podrace, and especially the last lap, is ripped straight out of Ben-Hur w/ some minor alterations to accommodate the "space-ageyness"
There were no real surprises. Even though I don't have a real memory of having seen it before, everything anyone said felt so blatantly obvious it was painful. This was the most boring movie I've seen since Jurrasic Park...
The "helping and caring" relationship between adult Padme and middle-school Anikin seemed to collapse into romantic feelings almost right away. Big fail.
Apparently the dark side's engineers have no engineering sense at all. The main reactor just sitting there open to shoot at from the landing dock? Wait did you say open to shoot at? Again?
Those long minutes Obi-wan spent dangling from the edge of the walkway during the duel of the fates when he had already demonstrated that the force allows him to leap impossible distances and regain his weapon instantly.
That silliness of 'midi-chlorians: and how they are a measure of Jediness. They are clearly ripping off mitochhondria, which everyone discovers in biology class, And they never even claimed that not everyone has them, which means everyone does, therefore everyone should be a Jedi...
Well that's enough...