This video: George Lucas King of Wooden Dialogue,
really softened my view on the prequels:
https://youtu.be/S5E-eSdRjXs
I hear this sort of argument all the time. “The dialogue was actually bad on purpose, you just don’t understand Lucas’s hidden genius!” Uh, no it wasn’t. If you want to create a believable tragedy, you need to get your audience invested in the characters, and I believe that’s what Lucas was trying to do. He just has no idea how to write convincing dialogue.