Rating: 
Summary: boring
Review: This movie had everything: hype, stars,amazing special effects, all the crucial elements that hollywood blockbuster should have. Despite all these elements,"phantom menace" fails to live up to my expectation. Clumsy plot, bad acting, stupid dialogue, I actually fell asleep about half way throughout the movie but couldn't sleep any longer because I paid 9 bucks for it. This movie is drenched with so many special effects, it's boring. Final climactic battle probably the most boring sequence in the entire movie. I think George Lucas should not direct episode 2.
Rating: 
Summary: Top Five Reasons this Movie is Terrible . . .
Review: 5. The FORCE is just the collective wishes of of bunch of algae???4. The waspy little boy they got to play Vader makes the Olsen twins acceptable "actrons" by comparison. 3. Ends with a large space station blowing up. Gee I've never seen a Star Wars movie in which that happened before. 2. The racist portrayal of Asian "bad guy business aliens" in the begining. 1. The affront to nature that is Jar Jar Binks. Do even any three year old crack-babies like this heinous addition to the Star Wars mythology? BAD Mr. Lucas, BAD. See a real science fiction movie and buy The Matrix instead.
Rating: 
Summary: I love this movie
Review: This movie is the best i love all the star wars there all great (THE BEST) movie if your thinking of buying it buy it now or if you are thinking of seeing it go see it its one of the best star wars ever!
Rating:
Summary: star wars for a new generation
Review: this movie is star wars for a new generation. yes it doesn't have luke skywalker and the rest of the cast from the original but it does have a great plot. the special effects in the movie are some of the best i've ever seen. all in all star wars episode one rates up there with the original star wars. i recommemd this movie to any true star wars fan.
Rating:
Summary: HUGE disapointment
Review: It's not that I didn't want to like this movie because I really wanted to like it. I spent some extra cash buying a midnight madness ticket to be one of the first in my town to see it. I saw it a few more times hoping I had missed something. I tried to make myself like this movie because afterall it's "Star Wars" but I've given up... I really don't need to mention Jar Jar because everyone knows how horrible of an idea that was. You can compare him to the Ewoks all you want but at least the Ewoks weren't spouting off 90's pop culture references and silly childish jokes. There was something MUCH less annoying with the Ewoks talking in a foreign tongue while we can unfortunately understand everything Jar Jar says. Jar Jar is often used when it feels he should have no part in the scene and his presence is the equivalent of a needle in the retina. This character has spawned a host of Anti-Jar Jar web pages and even a web ring. The characters are pretty lifeless. I didn't find myself caring for them as I did in the original series and I found the character interaction to be pretty bland. The acting was just so cold and without feeling. The liberal use of computer graphics added to this. More specifically, the computer graphics effects were hugely over-the-top and I felt they took away from the movie. It felt like watching a video game in parts because the enviornment was so heavily computer generated (and I could easily tell). This just added to the lifelessness of the movie. I couldn't believe this was the prequel to the series I had grown up loving. It's always sad when a great idea gets overly modernized and commercialized and this is one of the grimmest examples. (Those of you who saw the original Mr. Bean tv series and then the movie may have an idea of what I mean). I did enjoy the duel at the end with Darth Maul. The anticpation of Kenobi and Maul about to get it on while waiting for the electronic wall to go off was great. Unfortunately I wasn't just looking for eye candy. This isn't just a rush to judgement review on my part but a sad, slow realization of how much better this movie could've been. I'm not ripping on this movie because it may be the popular thing to do, this is genuine. I just hope Lucas does a better job on the next two.
Rating: 
Summary: A New Hope... for the future?
Review: I can't honestly say this was the worst movie of all time, but I truly was dissapointed with it. I'm sure everyone's tired of hearing about how bad the JarJar Binks character was, but on the other hand, maybe George will ditch him for something less marketable and more personable in the next two movies. Also dissapointing was the overabundance of CG animation. No matter how impressive computers are nowadays, it's still incredibley hard to fool the human eye, and Mr. Lucas actually did a better job scavenging battleship models and using puppets to create his special effects in the first trilogy. This movie wasn't a total loss however. The droids remained unchanged, and Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor are well on their way to making memorable characters. With a little work, they might become a little more identifiable as heroes.
Rating:
Summary: To quote William Shatner....
Review: ..."Get a life." Some people have said that the tedious nature, trite dialogue and wooden characterizations can be forgiven because this is merely 1/6th of the entire Saga. My friends, I prefer to think of it as two hours of my life that I can never get back. Whether it was 1/8th, 2/15ths or 100% of a story is not important.. what's imprtant was this movie did not reflect ANY of the BASIC elements necessary to create an effective, moving story. Yes, the choreography was beautiful; yes, the music was good, but I can go to the ballet for that. TPM did not *move* me. Its characters did not touch me (except for Darth Maul who sadly was killed at the end; and Anakin's mom who we will probably never see again); its words were so hoary I had to dust myself off every so often; its plot was paper thin as to have deceived one into thinking Roger Corman had his hand in its production. My friends, this is not about the next two movies, or how TPM fits in with the original three.. this is about how TPM stand by itself as a movie, as a story. It does not stand. It sits there and dares you to be entertained. I for one turned down the dare.
Rating:
Summary: George please read this
Review: I hope George Lucas reads some of these reviews because many valid points are made. George has lost touch with making a film story and only can make the visuals. At many points during the filming of Phantom Menace he had actors talking to blue screens or to a cardboard cutout, and it shows. George, make a film not just a loosely connected series of effects. You are making the same mistake as was made 20+ years ago with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They thought Star Wars could be imitated by just putting in a bunch of effects, but people want a story too. You are making better and better effects, but less and less story. Please listen to your fans, they are after all the people whom you should be making the film for.
Rating:
Summary: You guys JUST don't get it, do you. . .
Review: This is not only one of the greatest movies of our time, but a symbol of just what can be accomplished when a series is started out in such a stark, beautiful way. Like him, or hate him, Ahmed Best did the best job of acting as Jar Jar Binks. I just finished the movie for my 12th time, and I liked it better than I liked it all the other times. You simply can't deny the awesome scale that this movie has. The dialogue, depsite what people say, is not kiddy material. It's meant to be taken very seriously. Whether it sounds cliched or not, I'm sure George Lucas didn't mean for it to be. He has told a beautiful tale of how Anakin's training started, along with the tragedies that come with life, and just wait until Episode II hits theaters. All of us are going to have a much higher respect for this movie. When the new Anakin goes to the dark side, we're going to be running back to this movie just to see Jake Lloyd as the young and innocent Anakin who should've stayed that way. Job well done Lucas! You have crafted a beautiful masterpiece that will remain in my heart forever!
Rating: 
Summary: I think you might have missed the point...
Review: I thought "The Phantom Menace" is a great movie for a couple reasons. Let me first address the most apticipated, and heavily criticized first story in what will soon be the greatest sextet ever. You must first remember that one of the hardest things to do, in Sci-Fi no less, is work backwards. People in this genre pay too close attention to detail and would catch the smallest of inaccuracy. With that being said, Episode 1 did what it should have done, provided a background for the coming 5 movies. Episodes 4-6 were so great because the movies started with a plot and a conflict, Episode 1 had to provide it's own. The Dual Scene at the end is very well thought out and emotional as well. The scene where Darth Mual, Quin-Jon, and Obi-Won are waiting for those laser partitions to shut off is very intense. There are two faults for this movie: Jar-Jar Binks and CGI. Jar-Jar Binks is one of the worst characters in Sci-Fi lore and Lucas overused the CGI technology. Other than that, buy this movie because it's the first staple in what will become the greatest saga ever.
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