Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace's reviews
Media reviews
Cinemanía
The film contains some discordant elements, but even if you look for every single one of them with evil intentions, that would never be enough to discredit this science fiction wonder.
Rolling Stone
The actors are wallpaper, the jokes are juvenile, there's no romance, and the dialogue lands with the thud of a computer-instruction manual. But it's useless to criticize the visual astonishment that is Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.
Variety
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace is always visually diverting thanks to the technical wizardry but it is neither captivating nor transporting, for it lacks any emotional pull, as well as the sense of wonder and awe that marks the best works of sci-fi/fantasy.
Los Angeles Times
While the new film is certainly serviceable, it's noticeably lacking in warmth and humor, and though its visual strengths are real and considerable, from a dramatic point of view it's ponderous and plodding.
NJ.com
The entire movie feels kind of stuck, unable to move forward. Ewan McGregor does a very good job of sounding like a young Alec Guinness, as Obi-Wan. But you realize how much humor Harrison Ford brought to things; without him, at times the movie itself feels frozen in Carbonite.