I’ve heard the prequel bashers repeatedly condemn the love story between Anakin & Padme, but I don’t think they’re looking at it from the right perspective. Just as the tone of the original trilogy was modeled on the serials of the 1950s, Lucas went back even further and chose to model the prequels’ style on stories from the 1930s. So while it is a little cheesy, that’s by deliberate design. And besides that, stop to really think for a moment: what was your first love experience like? Were you confident and strong, sure that you knew exactly how to handle everything, and how it would all turn out? My personal guess is that for 99% of people in the world, their honest answer would be “no”.
That’s one way to look at it, and a common positive spin from those who enjoyed the Prequels. But the obvious snarky response is that this is basically a nicer way of saying “it sucks, but it sucks because of an intentional artistic decision, therefore, it doesn’t suck.”
The OT was modeled after the sci-fi/adventure serials of the 1930/40s (not 1950s necessarily), but it was never quite as cheesy as those black and white serials. Star Wars 1977 made more concessions to sci-fi as a genre than the old 1930s serials ever did, and elevated the material with break-through special effects and a fantastic cast. The Prequels, on the other hand, simply ported some of the dialogue conventions of classical romance as an homage (and as stylistic “sauce” to cover up the bad taste of Lucas’ self-admitted inability to write natural dialogue). So, while the Prequel dialogue was obviously modeled after certain conventions of classic cinema, it’s still grating to watch regardless.