Saw it again, with the kids, and realized that Imissed the whole underlying theme of the movie, what the movie was clearly all about, what Lucas obviously prizes over all else.
Ships.
Ships landing. Ships taking off. Ships flying past other ships. Ships filling the background like flies in the Everglades. Fully twenty minutes of the movie, minutes that would otherwise have been completely wasted on character development, were used to show every single departure and arrival of every character in a different ship.
When Anakin gets up and goes to a different room, I was honestly shocked he didn’t climb into a ship to do it. Followed, of course, by Padme in her nightgown and a different ship.