I actually think AOTC is reasonably paced. The open is a bit slow, but then you have the city chase, then Ani and Obi are split up and it cuts between their story-lines, then they come back together for the action at the end.
Too bad pace is the very least of that movie’s problems.
AOTC starts off with a bang…literally. And after the chase scene is when they tried to develop the love story a bit and nothing interesting happens until Anakin goes to find his mom. Even as it pertains to Obi-Wan his story doesn’t get interesting until his fight with Jango Fett…then the rest of the movie happens. In between these scenes we of course got people talking about…stuff and hardly any of it furthered the plot. The best example is the scene where Obi-Wan, Mace and Yoda are talking about Anakin being arrogant when it was already established in the chase scene that Anakin was full of himself. Also most of the action in AOTC was ass to me; especially the lightsaber duels whereas ROTS had multiple entertaining moments of action throughout it’s runtime. Of course stuff like the duel with Grevious was terrible but it’s not as bad as Yoda’s fight with Dooku.