The Phantom Menace has been widely regarded as the worst of the Star Wars film saga and one of the biggest reasons is JAR JAR BINKS who has polarized fans. I was a bit worried and excited to see how would Doescher take on this character and the rest of the CGI-visual fest. This retelling of Episode I brings back the wonderful prose and iambic pentameter from the previous episodes, but it fails to bring life the messy plot of TPM to life successfully. I don't blame Doescher because he wasn't given much to work with, but he does a decent job of dealing with Jar Jar and the lackluster film. 
 As a child I loved The Phantom Menace with the podracing and Darth Maul scenes because it was a visual feast. The action scenes in the previous episodes were so well-done, but here I just couldn't appreciate them. All of the scenes were extremely hard to visualize especially the podracing one and it just didn't feel right having "messengers" tell of the action. It was a clever, original idea but I just felt so removed from all of the actionpacked scenes. 
 Jar-Jar Binks is smarter here than in the prequel trilogy, making verbose asides that speak of a far more knowledgeable creature than we're used to. One minute he talks like a Gungan (meeeesa) and then he's discussing how everyone thinks that he's such a lowly creature. The treatment of his character with the asides is similar to the way R2D2 was handled previously, but it just didn't work for me with Jar Jar. I just couldn't wrap my head around a Jar Jar who was remotely intelligent and I became irritated with him more than once. 
 Ian Doescher does give The Phantom Of Menace his all, but you can't build a mansion with blueprints for a cottage. I do give him credit for making TPM palatable and entertaining at times, but it's not his fault that the source material is mediocre. I'm looking forward to reading the following installments in the prequel trilogy which will serve Doescher much better I'm sure. Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith are far better films and I have a feeling I'll enjoy their adaptations much better.This review was originally posted on Bookish Antics