Good Things from the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

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That's a joke, right? The writing in the prequels makes the pulpiest of pulp fiction look like Shakespeare. The prequels are nothing but insubstantial spectacle with bad acting and worse writing.

The plots of the original three werent good either. What saved them was Hamill, Fischer, and Ford.

The plots of the original three were trite, but a trite plot doesn't kill a story if it's well written (see: Dragon Age: Origin, for example). The OT wasn't great writing, but it was passable, and as you say good acting made it seem better than it was. Give a mediocre actor like Hayden Christenson or Natalie Portman horrible lines like those in the prequels and the result will always be painful. Even some of the better actors, like Ewan McGregor, gave less than satisfying performances simply because the writing was so bad. Honestly the only prequel performance that was really at all redeeming was Ian McDiarmid's, but I still found the prequel's portrayal of Palpatine to be...disappointing. Palpatine seemed to be far too opportunistic when he should have been a puppet master orchestrating events like Kreia. (Yes, the prequels say that's what he's doing...but they certainly don't show it.)

I finally re-watched the Star Wars prequels a couple of years ago, and was surprised how much I enjoyed them. In fact, I now feel a bit disturbed about being brainwashed into joining the "EVERYONE knows they're the WORST FILMS EVER" bandwaggon. As SF films go, they're pretty damn good. They suffer a bit from stilted dialogue and actors who don't really get what's going on, but that used to be practically universal in SF/Fantasy on screen. (TV was finally getting better at "actorly" genre material around that time, which is maybe why this problem stood out so much.)
Things I liked?

1. The politics. Yes, the politics. Instead of a straightforward battle against colour-coded eeeeevil, this is the tragedy of a democracy being destroyed from within. Complete with scheming "patriots", conveniently externalised "enemies" and cluelessly inert institutions. Come to think of it, no wonder so many people hate these films. Cuts a little too close to home for all of us.
2. The sheer variety of species, places and machines on display, which feels right for a galactic civilisation at its height. Could go into detail, but it'd be like "Star Wars: An Illustrated Encyclopedia." But for example, I love the visual design and voice-acting in the Kamino clone-factory scenes.
3. Liam Neeson: Best Jedi.
4. Ian McDiarmid: Best Sith. His scenes with Anakin in III are electrifying. Palpatine in general is an impressive chess-player: Episode II basically shows him putting the Republic in zugzwang.
5. Dammit, I LIKE uptight and snippy Young Obi-Wan. Naff trash-talk and all.

Even some of the stuff I didn't like so much had some decent pay-offs: you learn a lot about Qi-Gon from his interactions with Jar-Jar, and there's a good scene in the awkward Anakin/Padme romance where Anakin accidentally lets out a little too much of his political beliefs.