You hardly sound like an idiot and that was one of the most interesting and spot-on posts I've read in some time. I haven't seen the documentary in question yet (as I still have a hard time talking myself into buying ROTS) but you point out what I've suspected all along. And I totally agree with you about the cost and trouble of set building and costume making- ridiculous levels of trouble and detail for such sophmoric and heartless final product.
Reading your post reminded me of another facet of my life- I've gotten really into 'home haunting' for Halloween to the point of spending much time geeking out over building elaborate creepy decorations to put out in my front yard for Halloween. Lest I seem like I digress...
... there's a rule of thumb that home haunters try to follow that addiction to craft can quickly erase- darkness forgives all. The idea being that no matter how many weeks you spend tweaking your fake zombie body or fake tombstone to make it look uber-realistic the trick-or-treaters will be coming to your house at night- in the dark- and only spending a few minutes. The best 'special effects' can be a quick coat of paint on a piece of cardboard instead of an elaborate $1000 prop that you stay awake for 6 days straight tweaking. Less is often more when it comes to embellishment and if it doesn't help your overall scene... well, then, you're screwed. 
Many threads have talked about how the PT seems less 'real' than the OT and this is for the very reasons you bring up. Heck I was even just today watching ADM's edit of ROTS and found myself wishing he would have cut MORE 'dialogue' out of the film. I use the ' 's because I don't even consider most of it dialogue- its simply the characters stating what is going on around them. Now GL has been taken to task for this before but a few line of C3PO dialogue (ie 'Oh look there's Capt. Solo still frozen in carbonite!'... no sh*t, Sherlock!) but it runs rampant in the PT. My only guess is that that was GL's attempt to help the actors have SOMETHING to react to (maybe if I make them *say* what they're seeing I won't have to interact with them as actors!).
And still, with all the technical tweaking the ILM team does, some of the effect shots (or more specifically composite shots) still look like they were made by one of us at home. Look at the scene where Anakin and Obi go to meet the politicians after recusing Palps- the head-and-shoulder shots of Palps (with Lucas' daughter and crew standing behind him) and Sam Jackson talking are ATROCIOUSLY matted. I expected to see a green outline around them. And everyone in the background during the conversation shots are squeezed so tightly together and just doing nothing its laughable. But I bet that if we could zoom into the 63rd ship from the left during the space battle we could have seem individually rendered fingernails on the middle clone trooper. Aaarrgggghhh.