CWBorne said:
The dinner table scene with everyone in the Skywalker's home always struck me as a microcosm of so many of the dubious elements in the films. Bad comedy with Jar Jar, numerous reminders of the idiot plot (apparently Qui-gon and company can't trade with anyone else for a smaller ship?), horrendous dialogue, and the acting, oh lord the acting. Lloyd is cringe inducing, Jar-Jar is in full shucking and jiving mode, Portman & Neeson feel like they're practically asleep, and Pernilla August seems as if belongs in a whole other movie.
Its basically at this scene that I sunk in my theater seat and realized that I didn't care about any of these characters. There was nothing engaging about them, and that his was likely the best it was getting.
+1
finding the worse scene in TPM is like debating the worse player on the Bears offensive line. But this is a microcosm.
i actually didn't think jake lloyd was that bad in this scene - thought he was pretty good taking initiative and volunteeering to pod race.
natalie portman was pathetic but it was also her dialog. we all know lucas cannot write dialog (he also is not competant in other aspects of screen-writing and this is often overlooked), whats baffling is his choice of words. The group is stuck on tatooine because they cant barter for parts. padme frets about this predicament by saying:
"these junk dealers must have a weakness of some kind"
wtf?! "weakness" ? are they trying to kill a junk dealer like some nintendo game end-level boss? is watto gonna be blown up like the death star?! is this really the best way to phrase this!? wouldn't "theres gotta be something watto wants that he doesn't have" make a little more sense? true, its stating the obvious but i just thought that line was so ridiculous it took me out of the story each time. kinda like in episode III when mace windu says "a sith...lord?" I never brought this up because when going through the litany of issues for the PT, its way down there and I dind't want to be accused of nit-picking, but it stuff like that hurt the movie.
Pernilla august was not good either but the character of shmi sucked up until she and anakin parted ways. I just didn't like how the scene ended with her giving anakin the green light after just meeting everyone. I think there should have been more time and more opportunity for everyone to see how special Anakin was. When I saw the teaser trailer in 1998 and she said these lines (and sounded much better) I thought it would have occured at the exact moment qui-gon asked her permission to take anakin with him to the Jedi. for no other reason than it just wouldn't have made any sense prior in the story.
as for jar jar - the bit with liam catching his tongue probably would have been funny, unfortunately by the time we get to this point in the movie, we are so sick of him it just pisses us off more.