It's probably because I was pretty young when I first saw them, but I didn't mind them. I loved the originals (But by no means understood them at the time), and the prequels were more of what I wanted at the time-lightsaber duels and space battles. Looking back, there are problems: Episode 1 has pretty much no purpose. It's a waste of time they could have spent in exposition, setting up stupid groups like the trade federation etc. The conflict on Naboo has no stakes for the audience, if they're looking for the rise of Darth Vader. Which is ostensibly what the prequels are about. On the other hand, Liam Neeson is awesome, and so is Ewan McGregor. I always took them to be the protagonists, so I enjoyed it well enough.
My gripes with the second:
Anakin is generally poorly played, and written. He's stupid, irritating, and doesn't learn from his mistakes. He's snarky in an unjustified smug way. We never see him fall from grace, he's an annoying kid, then he's an emo teenager in black robes who's already a rebel against the rules for seemingly no reason. Really, that actor is my main issue with the entire second film. The rest was pretty fun. And again, I'm a massive Ewan MacGregor fan, so that was good.
The third film has the problems of the second, combined with uneven tone, and the completely out of left field introduction of Grievous as the new "Dragon" (TV tropes) for the antagonists. And his tone is completely fucked. He could be a completely menacing figure-he's scary looking as hell, and could be a great villain. Instead, he's a comic relief gag. He's comical and cowardly. He's like the baby of a Battle Droid and Jar Jar. They aim at Greek tragedy with Anakin's final fall, but they end up just making the tragic failing of a supposedly great man, look like an idiotic teenager completing his fall into idiocy through pointless violence and slaughter. Also, the acting was kinda shite. There weren't any really good performances, but a lot of bad ones, and a lot of fourth wall breaking mockery of the film in general by characters. But Star Wars has never had self-aware characters, and the points they're mocking are plot induced stupidity, so why should we care? It's not crticism or examining the genre, it's them mocking the movie they're in for being as stupid as it is.
But, all of the movies present some really good fight scenes, brilliant Lightsaber duels, and space battles. Which would be why they made a ton of money anyway. They're certainly not really egregiously bad. They're just not as good as the originals. They're a bunch of slightly below average science fiction/fantasy/space opera/whatever the heck we call the genre films. The original had badass fight scenes, but also interesting characters, and an intriguing plot. The prequels have potentially more badass fight scenes, but few interesting characters, and no semblance of a sensical plot. I guess 1/3 isn't bad? I'd certainly rate all of them above egregious pieces of shit like any of the Bay Transformers, or the Starship Troopers sequels. They're mediocre. Of course, you can drag your way through the RLM videos (I only got through the first one. That guy annoys me as much as Jar Jar Binks.) and pick up a bunch of other points you hadn't considered for why to hate it which didn't actually have anything to do with why you disliked the movies, and were in fact, views you did not hold, and extend your criticism to a 3 hour length which doesn't actually explain your problems with it.
(Also, stop bitching about midichlorians, really. It's a stupid and inconsequential point, yeah, but I figure it solves the plot point of having characters be able to confirm force sensitivity. Apart from that, it's entirely inconsequential, and doesn't ruin the mysticism at all.)
