We must have been at very different theaters.

I was in a small cowboy town with a liberal arts college. The movie came out on the last day of finals. There was an entire horde of college students who had just finished finals coming to line up for the movie. They let us start lining up at noon for the midnight showing. All day was basically a tailgate in the parking lot. At around 4 PM, the theater got the bright idea to issue wrist bands to save places in line for people who wanted to buy tickets for The Mummy, which was the other movie they were showing. So they sold out several showings of The Mummy. That probably screwed the deal for Star Wars, because The Mummy was such a good experience that watching Phantom Menace right after was a letdown.

After Phantom Menace, we went to the one diner in town that was open all night. It was full of college kids and town people who had also been at the midnight showing. People were either not talking about the movie at all, or making fun of it.

There was a lot of hype at the time with local news interviewing people who had seen it and thought it was awesome. Those people were cherry picked. I worked at a video store that summer that had hella Jar Jar merch. We barely sold any of it.

The Darth Maul fight was the only good part of the movie.