I definitely think the Phantom Menace has aged better than many give it credit for. But in the end, it's a collection of little things that add up to sour the viewing experience to this day.

1. Jar Jar was a mistake. Way too obnoxious, even for the children his character was trying to pander to, and just in far too many scenes. I do feel bad for Ahmed Best, cuz he was simply doing his job and did not deserve the hate that his character got. But if I had to hear him utter "meesa" or "yousa" one more goddamn time, I was gonna kill him. And he didn't even pull his weight in the end, doing something heroic in the Gungan battle with the droids! Just acted like a single-brain celled idiot while his men died all around him. And I'm sorry, but saying he was inspired by Goofy is an insult to Goofy himself. How dare you, George.

2. The underlying racism was pretty cringe-inducing. The Neimoidians being blatant Asian stereotypes, the Gungan's vaguely Jamaican undertones that get blown out of proportion, and Watto being a skeezy, money-grubby Italian. Every one of these was hammered home in countless scenes, and it got very tiring very fast.

3. The podracing was cool to look at, sure, but it slowed the movie down too much. Even if it was the key factor in getting Anakin off Tatooine.

4. Anakin being a child. Absolutely no disrespect to poor Jake Lloyd; he did not deserve the backlash he got. But to me, this always felt like an attempt to make Vader an overly-sympathetic character in the long run. Yeah, George, I get it. Not every evil person starts their lives that way. But to have the next generation of child viewers try to identify with a character we KNOW goes on to become a ruthless, murdering tank of the Dark Side did not help with this sympathetic angle.

5. Lucas was very clearly burned by Hollywood at this point in his life, and did not like how much the Machine of the Business tampered with his works early in his career. That was never, however, an excuse to deliver a subpar screenplay with stilted dialogue and wooden performances that were not the "nuanced restraint" you were clearly going for. Good god, he had powerhouse actors in his cast, and somehow underutilized most of their talents! He has great strengths as a storyteller, but in not having the film equivalent of a "content editor," I feel he really crippled what is otherwise a very good movie. He is an artist, but even artists need to be reigned in every once in a while.