Obviously he didnt deserve the harassment he got regardless. Like even if he was dogshit he wouldnt have deserved that. But I just rewatched Phantom Menace for the first time in awhile. Young friend of mine are going through the star wars movies because she was a sheltered homeschooled kid and hadnt seen them. Already did the OT, starting on the prequels.
Other than the obvious "oh wow, the racial stereotypes of literally three different alien species in this movie is insane", the main takeaway my rewatch gave me is "wow ok, Jake LLoyd is average at worst". He was just like, a regular kid actor? Nothing to write home about like say, young Maise Williams or something. But absolutely fine?
Given that some extremely good actors gave very hollow, wooden and terrible performances for the prequels I am going to blame it on the director as he's the common thread.
Samuel Jackson, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman all sucked extremely bad in these too. It takes effort to make these actors boring and flat.