I’d agree that cutting out Phantom Menace will save you three hours and detract nothing at all from the story.
However, II and III are still pretty lousy movies, and to be honest I struggle to come up with a reason why someone should watch them beyond just being able to say you watched them. For all that it allegedly tells the backstory of Darth Vader, it really doesn’t. There isn’t really a coherent character study there; he’s a jerk, he sides with the Emperor. The love story is utterly flat and disconnected with the other events in the films. It takes the movies 5-6 hours to say “Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader and the Republic fell. The end.”
The idea that the Star Wars saga is about Darth Vader was invented after the original trilogy. The original trilogy is primarily about Luke Skywalker and the Rebels fighting the Empire. And frankly, it works. Darth Vader as the protagonist does not work.