Ah, The Phantom Menace. Possibly the best thing it gave us was Simon Pegg's over-exaggerated nerd-rants in Spaced!
But that's not a slight to TPM, but rather a compliment to the comical genius of Mr. Pegg. In fact, I don't think TPM is a terrible film. Is it the best? No. But its not the worst, either Ok, it might be the worst of the Star Wars saga, but its not the worst film ever made.
There was much good in there. Liam Neeson and Ian McDiarmid, for example. Its also Natalie Portman's best turn as Padme, as her chartacter gets crushed under her love for Anakin in episode 2 and its drowned under almost no story for her (other than getting knocked up) in episode 3. The pod race was an exciting piece of action and Darth Maul ruled the world as most badass villain ever - if only for a very brief time on screen. The final lightsabre duel is - for my money - the best of the saga.
John Williams soundtrack was also, predicably, brilliant. Duel of the Fates is one of his best pieces of work.
However, the film does suffer in several areas. The Neimodians are (I believe, unintentionally) comical and don't work well as villains. In fact, the whole opening of the film is very poorly staged. Everything from the opening scroll to arriving at Tatooine feels chopped together and flows badly. So much happens in so short a time that it feels many scenes of exposition must have been cut out to keep the pace at an unnecessarily high speed. Or perhaps it was because the story didn't really start until we got to Tatooine and this whole sequence was rushed through to get us there. Still, if they needed to make cuts, they could have removed that whole pointless sequence with the giant fish. Pointless CGI just for the sake of it.
Then there's Jar Jar. I don't feel I need to go into WHY he was a mistake, because everyone knows it. Comedy cartoon character who engages in cheap slapstick and even descenRAB into poo and fart jokes. Unnecessary and adRAB nothing to the story. Should have been cut in the first draft.
But at least he wasn't vital to the plot. Unlike one Anakin "I will one day rule the galaxy, whilst wearing a big black suit and breathing like I've got chronic asthma" Skywalker. Jake Lloyd was terrible. Dreadful, even. It didn't help that he had rubbish dialogue, but he was so unbelievably wooden. And they called him "Ani" for short. ANI! Good god, no wonder he turned to the dark side! Way to mess with a young boy's head. But then I could forgive that if he wasn't forever saying "oops" and "yippee." The character of Vader didn't deserve raping like this.
Still, I think the basic premise of the film was sound. It still shocks me that people don't understand what the whole "trade route" debate is about. For those still in the dark, I'll walk you through it as quickly as I can.
Senator Palpatine is a Sith Lord intent on taking over the galaxy and exterminating the Jedi. So he sets out a plan to get himself elected as the Galactic Chancellor. After all, he has no army and cannot invade and why use force when you can get the population to simply give you the power? He manipulates the senate into making some rather mundane and seeminly unimportant tax changes, with the aim of pissing off the large and well-armed Trade Federation. Then, as his alter ego, he offers to assit the aggrieved party. But, in doing so, he creates a humanitarian disaster on his own homeworld. Simultaneously making the current Chancellor appear weak and generating sympathy for his people (and consequently, for himself, as their elected representative) he worms his way into the Chancellor's seat.
So it was NEVER about the taxation of trade routes. That was just the hook used to give the Trade Federation a grievance that could be exploited. And that's the thing about TPM; underneath it all, its actually a complex story of dirty politics and the manipulation of the public to gain power. Deep down, TPM is a good story. Its biggest problem is that its buried under poor dialogue, bad direction and a jarringly cartoonish sense-of-humour.
One really shouldn't mix serious politics and slapstick comedy. Not if you want to be taken seriously.
anniversary of perhaps the most anticipated movie in recent times. With all this talk at the moment of the Star Trek reboot, its easy to forgot the media melt down over the return of Star Wars back in the summer of 1999. 
MESA LIKE THIS!