Not to defend the whiny fanboys, but the Phantom Menace is terrible. It isn't terrible because it's Star Wars, it's terrible in spite of that. George Lucas had the best actors, screenwriters, filmmakers, and CGI studio at his beck and call. The characterization is just awful. There isn't a single well rounded character in the whole movie - every character is either one-dimension, wallpaper, or aimlessly does actions that directly oppose it's motivations. Qui-Gon cheats and steals, abuses his Jedi Mind Trick, and leaves civilians in danger unless the plot calls for him not to. The plot is nonsense. Literally, the wise Jedis and the trade federation military leaders do nothing but make awful decision after awful decision. The fight scenes are so clean, so devoid of life and character, that it's as if somebody saw the Matrix and didn't understand the point. The movie jumps between action scenes and pointlessly dialogue heavy council scenes as if it had no idea how to structure a basic story narrative. This would be fine if this movie was low-budget, or had terrible actors, but it had an unlimited budget and Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Terrence Stamp, and Samuel L Jackson. However, they put those actors on the backburner to concentrate on bad CGI characters and a child actor who unfortunately was in way over his head.
It's not the worst movie ever made, but it is really really bad. It compares very similarly to The Expendables, a movie that also tried to cash in on nostalgia with a cast with no characterization, that tried to fill in the gaps with visual effects and fight scenes.
I understand some of the acrimony isn't deserved - there are people who seemingly blame TPM for ruining their childhood or somesuch. However, the opinion that the movie is terrible is completely accurate.