The biggest problem with this movie is that there's no podrace for me to use for the same purpose I used the Episode I podrace for during viewings numbers 2, 3, 4, and 5. :)
The movie brings back all the Star Wars action we remember from times past, with a lot of other things we've never guessed at. I don't think any of the complaints about Episode I can be applied to Episode II. While I would not rank it a perfect movie, I can't imagine any Star Wars fan not liking it. I've heard it said several times that this movie is better than The Empire Strikes Back. While I currently wouldn't rank it there (my rankings are subject to change), I couldn't argue with someone who put it that high.
Of course, Star Wars is melodramatic. If you don't like that, you might criticize AOTC for it.
There are a lot of interesting similarities to Empire in this movie. I'll have to go see it again because similarities at the end were so interesting I forgot about many of the ones at the beginning.
I wish all you people who complained about Jar-Jar had just shut up.
I wound up watching this movie from the front row because arriving 30 minutes ahead of time was not early enough to find five seats together. It was a little disorienting, and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie from a better view. In particular, some of the lightsaber action was too bright and too quick to follow from the bottom of the screen.
At any rate, there's only about 1096 days until Episode III. I'm looking forward to it!
update: One last thing I forgot to mention in my delerium last night. Fans of the expanded universe novels will be surprised at the significant amount of material that is contradicted by this movie. You can throw a lot of those books out the window.
