So sorry for this drive by post yesterday. Came back from a long lunch and those words were still resting in my comment box as I had begun typing them from when there was some AOTC discussion going on a few days ago, and I semi-accidentally hit reply. no regrets tho and I stand by what it says.
Look I know it's pretty commonly considered the "most not good" of any of the films, but I've firmly transformed into a prequelist, able to set aside my long held dislikes of certain aspects of the trilogy because so much of it is indeed actually enjoyable, compelling and interesting, And, increasingly more so, the nostalgia of watching the prequels is a huge factor in enjoying them, with the bad and the good. Ep 1 is 20 years old! There's a lot of collective personal and cultural humor built up around some of the "badness" of those movies, that now it's more fun to laugh at the thing and enjoy the joy of the humor than it ever was to actively hold a grudge against the thing for it being dumb or cringey or whatever. the grand scope of that trilogy, poor execution of some aspects set aside, grows more interesting and relevant year by year, especially at the release of each new movie or book.
Plus the back half of AOTC, starting with the droid factory and on, is just plain fun, and I'll never ever get tired of Yoda showing up to the lightsaber fight.