March of the Idiots - A Tale of a Trip to the Movies

March of the Idiots - A Tale of a Trip to the Movies

I have been reading with earnest stories in my entertainment websites and magazines about how the motion picture industry is hurting big time this year. Ticket sales are off . by a LOT. One article gave a variety of reasons as to why and they include such things as idiot patrons, availability of DVDs, obscene ticket prices, and the infusion of commercials. I agree with all of these reasons as to why muh wife and I have been going to the movies a great deal less. It is too much of a hassle and people are really frigging annoying to boot.

This, however, did not deter us from going to see March of the Penguins (which is one of the nicest and best movies I have ever seen. Muh wife agrees with me on this point. I should write a blog about this movie in its own right, but I would give away so much. I implore you though to see this movie if you can.)

We went to a 6:40 pm showing of the movie and sat down in some pretty decent seats. We were then surrounded by old people, families with itty bitty children and others. What we were subjected to was astounding. Here are a few highlights.

1. At one pint in the movie, there were SIX conversations going on at once. SIX. One of them was on a cell phone. Other people in the theater including ourselves carefully shushed all these conversations and they would taper off. Sometimes, a small child would ask his or her parents questions about a movie. This I do not have a problem with. The 4th and 5th questions I have problems with.

2. There was a particular child close to us that kept talking to his mother. Muh wife and I shushed them several times. She immediately made excuses for the kid. My problem at that point is not with the kid. It is with the mother. Teach the kid some manners. There was another woman who eventually shushed this kid too. 5 minutes later, we had to shush the lady!

3. All of the aforementioned stuff was rude enough, so. I went to the manager after the movie to chat about the conditions of our movie going experience. She listened for a few minutes and then actually started defending the talkers by saying something to the effect of "Look, we cannot go into a movie theater and shush the entire theater because we would have a riot on our hands. It is our policy to handle the few people that this might inconvenience." She gave us two free passes and sent us on our way. That was simply ridiculous.

I don't have much more to say about this except that I have a feeling that events like this will continue to push muh wife and I away from the movie theaters. and that's a shame. we really do love going to the movies.