Rating: 
Summary: Star Wars fans would be better of without the prequels
Review: It's taken a good number of years to arrive at a final opinion about "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace". After vacillating between the good and bad of the movie, it is my final opinion that "Phantom Menace" is a tremendously disappointing movie that not only is aggravating to watch in its own right, but also heavily damages epic scope and mythos of the original trilogy. This movie still warrants two stars because there are still some excellent visual scenes and it is Star Wars, but this is too much of a letdown to recommend to anyone.
While it is true that no movie could live up to pre-release hype generated by the George Lucas hype machine and 16 years of anticipation, "Phantom Menace" fails on its own merits. Where, exactly, does it go wrong? Well, the first obvious problem is the acting. Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor are excellent actors in their own right. Yet, there performances as Qui-Gonn Jin and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, are wooden at best. Obi-Wan seems like he's around just to remind people of the earlier trilogy. He does very little and carries none of the presence he did in "A New Hope". The computer-generated character of Jar-Jar Binks was gross miscalculation by Lucas. Jar-Jar comes across as nothing more than an attempt to pander to a younger audience (which he did successfully with the Ewoks in "Return of Jedi" without hurting the movie), while aggravating the older core of Star Wars fans. When a character utters lines that sound like they're from Stephanie Tanner from "Full House", you know there's a problem. However, the biggest acting disaster the performance of Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker. Young kids are capable of acting (see Haley Joel Osment for example). Jake Lloyd is not one of those kids. All of his lines come across as incredibly forced and incredibly whiny. Some of his scenes are so cringe-inducing that I had to turn away from the screen when they happened.
Acting, alone, is not the only place "Phantom Menace" went wrong. It seems that Lucas lost his understanding of the intangible elements that made the original trilogy to special and magical. The climatic scenes in a "Phantom Menace" are nothing more than a rehash of the climatic scenes from "Return of the Jedi". There's a space battle scene that includes the 'out-running the ball of fire' sequence from "Jedi". Yet this scene is decidedly indistinct and lacking in drama. There's a ground battle scene that pales in comparison to its "Jedi" counterpart, and there's a lightsaber battle that, while more technically proficient than the Luke/Vader showdown in "Jedi", it carries none of the importance or emotion. Luke was fighting for his father's soul. Qui-Gonn and Obi-Wan's battle with Darth Maul seems perfunctory and without significant meaning. This was all done so much better in "Return of the Jedi" and yet it seems as though Lucas thought he could recapture that amazement by simply recopying the elements.
Alas, it gets worse. Lucas also made some extremely questionable plot choices in "Phantom Menace". One of the more aggravating ones was to give the 'Force' and biological basis in the form of midi-cholorians. In the original trilogy, the 'Force' seemed like a mysterious, magical energy field that influenced all there was in the universe. Here, it seems like a simple biological anomaly that can be easily tracked and understood. This really damages the mythology of the 'Force'. Another bad plot twist was making it so that Anakin was the creator of C-3PO. This seems incomprehensible in the original trilogy and appears to be thrown in to make everything more convenient than it should be. The final ludicrous plot development was the suggestion of Anakin being of a virgin birth. Implying that he is a Jesus-like character is equally as offensive as the 'slave-language' of Jar-Jar and the stereotypical Asian accents of the Trade Federation.
The timeline of events also doesn't mesh particularly well with the original trilogy. It all feels like it fits together in fashion that is too neat and tidy. The magic of the original "Star Wars" trilogy was created as much from what we didn't know and learned from conjecture versus what we did know. With the prequels, Lucas chose to answer a number of questions about Star Wars past that were better off left unanswered.
Rating: 
Summary: The Force is with this one
Review: It's unfortunate that the reviews for the DVD of TPM are included with the reviews of the movie itself. So much new material has been included on the DVD, it's practically a different product from the VHS version. The television ads aren't lying when they say this baby is the "new standard in DVDs". I've reviewed a lot of DVDs specifically on their extra content and never have I seen one where every feature was so compelling. Lucas is a master at slightly retooling his works every few years to drain every bit of money he can out of his loyal fans, but this time he gives his audience a full meal which augers well for the DVD release of the other films in the series. Most obviously, there's the filmmakers' commentary. Like the movie itself, there's almost too much information happening at once to catch it all on the first viewing. If you have any interest at all in the filmmaking process, you'll find yourself rewinding over scenes to hear everything that's said. In some ways, it could be argued that the commentaries of all the participants should've been separated out into more than one track. The most obvious choice would've been to have a director's/editor's/producer's track distinct from the producer's track, but that's a very small quibble indeed. There are very few who won't think the track given is compelling and, in some cases, actually plot-amplifying. But it's really disc two that provides the most content. You'll spend a good five or six hours mining for treasure, here. Some of the material is familiar to those who followed the development of the film for years on starwars.com. There, a series of web documentaries were created at various stages of the film's progress to keep people interested. Now, they comprise a nifty historical record. Tackling the film from every angle, they give you in-depth understanding of the various challenges posed by lightsaber battles, costuming, visual design and casting. For those of us who followed the development of the movie regularly on starwars.com, there's not a great deal which is new here. But even if you logged on to starwars.com every day, you'll be glad to have this collection offline. Likewise, the trailers and tone poems are things fans will have seen many times over, but they're rendered here in more splendid quality than is available on the web. Particularly significant in this section is the music video for "Duel of Fates". While this has long been permanently available on starwars.com, it received little bandwidth priority there. Oddly, this was only available in a very small size with unimpressive audio. Here, it's preserved better than I remember it on MTV. Instead of just being an exercise in directorial creativity, it neatly edits together scenes from the creation of the movie and the film itself,. It's worth pointing out that the collection of television spots is by no means exhaustive. But the most significant ones are here, especially the emotionally effective tone poems. Still, the one thing that fans and non-fans will want the most from disc two is the hour-long documentary. Without narration, it provides raw video from various phases in the production. You see many relatively unguarded moments which range from those that help you understand the enormity of the filmmaking task, to those which give you a new appreciation for the bits of the film that annoyed many viewers. You will definitely start to see this film as a beginning of a larger tale, not as merely a film unto itself, and this will doubtless increase your appreciation for it. Indeed, what this excellent documentary does best is to capture the struggle of making this film, which, despite having the famous first trilogy as a point of reference, was every bit as revolutionary as, say, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES. More than that, though, you'll see the very human side of the filmmakers as they go through moments of daunting frustration yet miraculously never seem to lose their innate enthusiasm for their craft. It is reason enough to buy this DVD. What most hard-core fans will buy this DVD for, though, is first access to the trailer for Episode II. Through online links, DVD owners are given first crack at the upcoming feature on a special site that will, apparently, be constantly updated until the release of ATTACK OF THE CLONES. If you care about getting the very latest official information from LucasFilm, you're going to need this DVD. Unfortunately, this opportunity is not available to Macintosh users. Indeed, it painfully points out the only failing of this DVD. The special features are not Macintosh-friendly. No Mac user can get to the special DVD web site. And many are reporting problems even mounting disc two. This DVD, too, contains a large number of "Easter Eggs" (hidden, coded features), almost none of which are accessible on a Mac. If you can only watch this DVD on a Mac, I suggest you go to macfixit.com for full reports on steps you may have to take to get the most out of this purchase. It's ironic that there are such problems for Macs, since Macs were used extensively in the production of the film itself. That aside, there's not much to complain about with this DVD. LucasFilm has done right by its fans and its critics, giving even casual viewers plenty of cause to revisit that galaxy far, far away.
Rating: 
Summary: great movie but will sound also good in DTS
Review: Its a pretty cool movie and it is THX certified but most people own receivers with dolby digital and DTS encoding. And you audio folks know that DTS sounds way better than regular dolby digital. WIll you guys make a DTS edition also???!!!
Rating:
Summary: Finally on DVD!!!!
Review: Its good to see the Phantom Menace on DVD. This disc is worth its cheap price for the extras alone. Mr. Lucas finally delivered and did he ever to the tune of a few hours of extra stuff. He even went back and re-did special effects and sequences he cut-out for the theatrical release. I know everyone slammed this movie, but its not all that bad. Actually, its a fun ride in familiar territory. Here's looking forward to Ep. 2 come May 2002.
Rating: 
Summary: great - if your under 10
Review: Its inconceivable that im giving such a bad rating to a star wars movie, but its all that it deserves.
Evrything i loved about the originals, i even loved Revenge of the Jedi, is gone.
The little kid is almost as obnoxios as Jar Jar, luckily for him we got distracted by covering our ears in horror whenever Jar Jar was on screen.
But my nephew at 4 loved this film, kids seem to love it, anyone with slightly more demanding an appetite tends to feel naseus.
This was blatantly concevied as a giant marketing excercise, to see how many games and toys they could tie in to one big product.
The fact Ewan Mcgreggor, in interviews said it was the most boring thing hes ever done pretty much sums it up.
If only Lucus would forget about making millions from games and marketing and remeber that its a film we were all waiting a long time to enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Episode I
Review: ITS IT LOOKS LIKE STAR WARS, IT FEELS LIKE STAR WARS, IT IS STAR WARS. JUST WATCH IT AND YOUR EYES GET LARGER AND LARGER TRYING TO TAKE IT ALL IN. IT HAS THE BEST LIGHTSABER ACTION EVER, AND FITS RIGHT IN AS A GREAT INTRODUCTION TO THE STAR WARS UNIVERSE. IT DOESNT NEED A MASSIVE TWISTING PLOT. ITS ONLY THE BEGINNING TO THIS WONDERFUL SAGA.
Rating:
Summary: I wouldent whipe my ___ with this movie.
Review: Ive waited 20+ years for this piece of crap?
Theres just way too many flaws here. Lucas's directing skills is one of them. When i first saw this movie i felt a shiver and goosebumps all over my body. The title started scrolling and you started to read the story ............ The NEW star wars story and thats about the height of it all. 2 hours later i wanted 2 hours of my life back. I gave this movie 2 stars for a couple reasons.
1. its a star wars movie (had it not been it would have gotten 1)
2. I cant go into the negitives. What went wrong you ask? Well heres a small list of pros and cons....... Pros: -Its a star wars movie.
-Good politics
-great visuals Cons:
-This is a Star Wars movie? Wake me up im having a nightmare. -Terrable dialog. I mean seriously, its about equivillent to that of a ninja turtles or pokemon episode. George also did a wonderful job of using the words "bantha fodder" about 10 times. -Bad actors. Very few of the actors actually sounded convincing. -Horrific character interaction. I never got the sence that others mattered to one another. Unlike the first trilogy which managed to do that perfectly. -Jar Jar. I love childrens characters and movies, From the lion king to ice age. And i can understand what lucas wanted to do with jar jar, the problem is he went completely off the deep end in creating this character. I guess he wanted to make the most annoying, wacky, ignorant character he possably could and in the process alienated anyone over 12. -An overall lack of attention to what really mattered. I think lucas was so involved with what he "could" do with the visual effects he never asked himself what he should use it for. Insted he decided to use effects in the movie to cover up all the errors he made, and theres alot. -Lucas should have written all three scripts togeather.
If he would have done this, he would have realized that the first episodes time should not have been spent on pod racing and medaclorians. This has basicly screwed the rest of the series. Well im not going to go on with the cons, i think you get my drift. I will save you some time though and do an episode 2 review really quick. Pros:
Read above
Cons:
Read above
+
-Terrable love story. I'm a man, thus enclined to dislike love stories, however i can tolerate them to a point as long as they are good. This was not. It seemed like he wanted to take an episode of a day time soap and throw it in. That didnt work.
Rating:
Summary: Drinking Problem Meets Star Wars.
Review: Jar Jar Binks. A fine idea: introduce a character who is so aggravating and without purpose that only a terrible case of amnesia would alleviate our pain. Clearly a cheap sequel, why did we expect otherwise? We Foolish Fans. George, I want my money back. On second thought, if this lightweight excuse for a movie is evidence of a drinking problem you may have developed, perhaps you can use my $7.50 along with everyone elses to pay for a quality treatment center. Let's just hope their treatment of you is better than your treatment of us.
Rating:
Summary: What a rip off!!!
Review: Jar-Jar? A kid in a Star Fighter, flying through a station, killing the bad guys? Not even The Force can explain this. Arrrr! If I could, I would submit without giving it even 1 star. I'm sure it's not worth that much. 'nuff Said.
Rating:
Summary: StarWars:The First Episode
Review: Jedi's, Dark sith lords, fantastic spaceships, exotic palacesand a boy's journey into the destiny that would find him.It was notthat this 1st enstallment of george lucas's Starwars was bad in any way.But the logicial fact is that this perticular episode was meant to have a much more lighthearted theme,and as G.L. said would very much appeal to younger moviegoers.This one was to be a shadow of things to come,and to have a very comic book like feel to it.On the positive side this 1st installment in the StarWars saga had great villians and very spectacular effects.Liam Neeson gave a wonderful proformence as the rebellous Jedi master,and Ewan McGregor gave a brilliant and convincing preformence as the young ObI-Wan Kenobi.
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