I agree. I'm beginning to realize more and more that my stance is shifting to TPM being my favorite prequel. It has a lot of crap in it, too, and by crap I mean things that conflict with the real trilogy, especially the whole Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan thing. But like you said, looking at it by itself and ignoring its place in the saga, their relationship is handled pretty well. I don't really mind Jar-Jar. There were certainly worse things in the prequels than him. A lot of scenes were on location. It felt more real. In terms of the production, it was handled like a real movie. Things that needed to be on bluescreen were on bluescreen. The rest used locations and sets. Some of the sets had CG enhancements as needed. The lightsaber battle was really good and was slightly reminiscent of the ESB battle (which will always be my favorite). The battle droids are always annoying, and the Gungan/droid battle wasn't the best, but it is a prequel, so you have to take your lumps. But there's nothing really standout bad for it. It's not fine cinema, but it flows well enough as a standalone movie, I'm beginning to realize. The DVD podrace scenes are a disaster, but I don't count that as part of the actual movie since it was crap added in later (why, I couldn't tell you). I'm not by any means saying it's great, and there's a lot of stuff in there that could be better, but compared to a lot of stuff in ROTS, it shines.