This manga is one of the most popular manga series ever, and it's obvious why. It's because the main character always does the right thing. It's always about Naruto: he can do the impossible, and no other character in the story has the right to be better. This is what the reader should believe.
I began watching the anime when I was ten, dropped it after moving to a different country and losing the access to a cable TV in a language I understand, but three years ago I started reading the manga. What I really liked about it is the variety of characters. The main one, Naruto, is the just neutral because nobody wonders what he'll do next (it will be the right thing to do, anyway!), but there are plenty of wonderful secondary characters you can write fanfics about!
In the beginning, the manga has no plot. Nope, none at all. And then it begins about thirty chapters too late, and is nothing special. By now the Naruto sank to the same place where most of the shounen manga series end et at some point: a collection of useless scenes without a real plot, pointless battles and a villain who decided to wait until fiftieth volume to reveal his plans of taking over the world. The author ran out of ideas, and now even the humor is gone.
As for the art... IT SUCKS. Seriously. The battle scenes aren't clear enough, and there are always ink splashes everywhere. The character design is very basic, and the backgrounds rarely include anything more complicated than tree silhouettes. If it was a random fan-work on the internet I would've said that it's awesome, but for a professional work it's just lame.
So why do I keep reading it? Because some of my friends write wonderful fanfiction stories for Naruto, so I have to stay up to date.