Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Frankly, this film is terrible, and the producers were obviously banking on the original Star Wars coming back all excited, and didn't bother come up with a good story. What's wrong? Well -- (1) The virtuous Obiwan Kenobi talks an admiring young boy to participate in a dangerous race so that he can bet on the boy and win the money he needs for his mission. Sounds like the later movie HUNGER GAMES, except that in HUNGER GAMES we're expected to despise people who bet on children's lives. (2) The young boy befriends a teenage girl who is presumably 6 or 7 years older. Come the next movie, they're suddenly the same age so that they can have a love affair. Are they of different species that age at different rates, or did the writers simply not plan ahead? (3) The boy's mother tells Obiwan that she gave birth to the boy without having sex. Having introduced this bizarre Christological symbolism, the writers promptly forget it. (4) And there's a character named JarJar, who apparently has no function in the movie except to irritate a lot of the critics.