I share your puzzlement over TPM -- there are about twenty minutes of good movie buried in two hours of yawn. And most of the good stuff serves as character development for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, which is nice, but Qui-Gon is largely irrelevant to the entire rest of the story, and Lucas never does a very good job of articulating what Obi-Wan's experiences in this movie have to do with any of the decisions he makes later. It's such an intriguing mess.