I feel the same way, except for the battle droids. Otherwise I really don't think TPM is as bad as many make it out to be. The farting animal, the too long pod race, and the killing of the under-used darth maul being my biggest gripes with the story. Imagine if maul lived, made it to episode 2, where anakin kills him using the Dark side as revenge for qui gon...anyway, that's not how it went down.
Have you ever watch Fall Of The Jedi?
It really streamlines the prequels. It takes all three movies and makes them into one movie, just over two hours long and cuts out a lot of material that doesn't need to be there.
Worth a watch if you haven't seen it.