In honor of Star Wars: The Force Awakens' release, we're rerunning our series from 2012 when I watched the Star Wars movies for the first time. Read my intro/explanation here, and here are my reviews of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

Oh heavens, so here we are.  The Phantom Menace came out when I was 14, and out of all of the Star Wars movies I probably knew the most about this one without having seen it.  I clearly remember the gripes about the fiasco of Jar Jar Binks, and even though the prequel series was probably aimed at just about my age group at the time, it still seems (at least to my eye now) even younger-reaching than that.  I thought I would be surprised at how young Natalie Portman looked, but I was far more shocked at how Jake Lloyd as Anakin was only slightly larger than a fetus.  His age, plus the interminable Jar Jar, wiped away the quirky appeal of the original series and turned it into a basic kid-pic without a decently intriguing story.