The true brilliance of the Plinket reviews is that rather then focus on the aspects of the prequels that the fanboys like to bitch about (like Jar Jar), they actually take apart the films as films and focus on things like character development, pacing, editing, cinematography, and so on to explain why so many people felt such an emotional disconnection with those films. Granted, Plinket does nitpick the story a lot, but that was really done to show how rushed and sloppy the script was, and, by extrapolation, to assert the premise that Lucas made the films not because he actually had a story he wanted to tell, but as an excuse to sell more toys.
Not that I have a problem with movies that are toy commercials on principle; I love the 1986 Transformers film, and that was a blatant toy commercial. However, at least the '86 Transformers movie didn't bore me with long stretches of insufferable political meandering and a poorly executed "tragic fall of a hero" story arc. Hot Rod goes through the standard "hero's journey" in less then 90 minutes; there was no reason for me to suffer through Anakin just getting more and more angsty over the course of 3 films, each over two hours long!
And that actually brings up something else. Did you ever notice that Jar Jar is the only character in The Phantom Menace to actually have a story arc? He starts out as a bumbling fuck-up who annoys everyone around him (including the audience), yet by the end of the film he's a general and war hero. All the other characters are just stagnant and lifeless, with little emotion and lacking motivations for us to care about their struggles.
That's also why Palpatine's character got so much praise in Revenge Of The Sith. He was the only character in the entire trilogy to have a clear goal that he was working towards. Combined with how poorly written all the other characters were, seeing Palpatine working towards creating the Empire actually made me care a little, while the deaths and suffering of all the other characters just evoked indifference.