Movie Theater Pet Peeves

Movie theaters are the same all across the land.

There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are so-so movies. But the one constant are the theaters where we watch these movies. I'm sure all of us have our favorite theater. We probably pick it for various reasons. Either it's close to where we live, it has good popcorn, comfortable seats, etc. All the things that make the movie going experience, a pleasent one. Except for location, the other things seem simple and you'd think more theaters would get them right. Sadly, this just isn't so.

I've been to a great many movie theaters in my life and I've seen some common mistakes repeated over and over again. I don't meant to go off on a rant here, but why does it seem to be the new trend for movie theaters to put the cup holders on the back of the seat in front of you? I mean, first of all, it means the cup is pretty much hanging out at such an angle that soda will soon be dripping out from under the cover. If there's someone sitting in the seat in front of you and they move, your soda is likely to pop out, and if you have to leave your seat and try to walk down the aisle, you're going to end up banging everyone else's soda that's in your row. The proper place for a cup holder is at the end of your arm rest. And while we're on the subject, there should be a cup holder on every arm rest, not just every other!

Okay, Popcorn. There seems to be two schools of thought regarding popcorn. There's the theaters that put the butter on for you and there are those where there's a self-serve butter dispensing machine. Which means you either end up with what the concession person thinks is the right amount, or you can try to spray on your own butter, which sounds like a good idea, but you can only apply it to the top, and hope it works its way down the rest of the bag. So basically you end up with drenched popcorn on the top and dry on the bottom. The proper way to apply butter is fill the bag a quarter full, apply buttery topping. Fill it another quarter, apply topping, and so on until the bag is full.

Remember when movie previews were just movie previews and lasted only a few minutes? Now you get into the theater at the posted time, and you're lucky if the movie will start within fifteen minutes. You've got commercials, some of which are taken straight from television, army recruitment ads, short films which are nothing but long commercials, Will Roger's pleas for money, the Ninja Candy Box telling you to use Movie Phone, and the theaters choice of cartoon informing you to be quiet and keep your cell phone's off and sometimes even, not to smoke. We still need to tell people not to smoke in Movie Theaters? Oh, and then there's my favorite, sponsered by the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, or some religious group, that tells everyone to be nice and smile to everybody because courtesy is contangious! You mean that there are rude people in the world, who won't be rude anymore, because this commercial tells them not to be? Wow, who knew it was that easy?

I don't think I'm asking for much. Oh sure there are other things I could complain about. The volume of the movie, either blasting out your ear drums or too quiet to hear. Temperature, freezing in Summer, broiling in Winter. But I don't want to come off as too negative. Despite all these things, I would still put going to the movies near the top of my list of all time favorite activities, maybe I just needed to get some of these things off my chest.