I have read the first book and found it very tedious. I actually preferred the film (and that's very unusual!) Personally, I find the books vastly overrated and while I enjoyed the films, I couldn't say they are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Vast armies of CG characters don't really do it for me and the second film was about 80% padding.
Everybody goes on about Star Wars Episode 1 - personally, it didn't fall far short of my expectations which were based on Return of the Jedi. Now that was a disappointing film - too much like The Muppet Show for my liking and not nearly as good as 1 & 2 (or 4 & 5, I suppose).
So for me, I'd rank the Star Wars films thus:
Star Wars - excellent
The Empire Strikes Back - excellent
Attack of the Clones - pretty good
Return of the Jedi - reasonable
The Phantom Menace - reasonable