What was your worst movie-going experience?

Cafe Society
1

Inspired by this feature at The Onion AV Club. I’ll start.

I haven’t had any disastrous movie outings, but there have been a few regrettable ones. There was a minor scuffle at a sparsely attended Saving Private Ryan showing. I went to see Death to Smoochy with a girl who thought it was a date when I wasn’t interested. I saw Mr. Baseball, in theaters, and paid U.S. currency for the privilege.

The worst, however, would have to be The Thin Red Line, which I saw with three friends my senior year of high school. The movie was an interminable bore, but what made it really awful was that, between buying our tickets and getting to the diner for a pre-show lunch, a Late Show staffer came up to us on the street and offered us a chance to go see Letterman (and this was back when Letterman was relevant). I guess our brains all locked up, because we reasoned that we had these movie tickets (totally refundable, of course), so we couldn’t go.

When the movie finally ended, we looked at each other to confirm that we all felt the same way about that pretentious, dentist-appointment of a movie, then (literally) slapped out foreheads and wondered why the fuck we turned down the Late Show.
Anyway, I’m sure there are lot’s of worse stories than that out there.

2

Mystery Science Theater 3000 – The Movie.
Didn’t start until late, then interripted by a false Fire Alarm that sent everyone from the theater. The annoying, skull-drilling alarm and strobes really did you in – an actual fire would’ve been less annoying. Then we filed back in and, I think, missed much of the film.
Plus, of course, the MST3K movie was more than a little disappointing itself – shorter than an actual episode, with big riffable gobs of the original film missing.

3

I’ve had to walk out of several movies lately because of shaky-cam photography, which makes me very motion sick. I’ve walked out of a couple because they sucked horribly (Fahrenheit 911 for example).

But the worst one was in my high school days. I was dating a young lady (call her Marianne) and we went to see some spy movie, don’t remember what. She had come home from school that afternoon feeling slightly under the weather, but had felt better by the time I came to pick her up. She really wanted to see the movie and had been looking forward to it. Halfway through, she says “Ohmygod” and proceeds to barf all over me, herself and the folks in front of us.

4

I went to see a reissue of Fantasia with a theatre full of children who had been told they were there to see Mickey Mouse. For the entire time preceding the Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment, they screamed in anticipation of Mickey. While the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was on the screen, they screamed in delight for Mickey. When the Sorcerer’s Apprentice was over, they screamed in dismay that Mickey was gone.

5

Apollo 13. The picture was badly out of focus the whole time. Half of the picture was cut off, so we never saw the tops of people’s heads. And some half-wit of a “father” let his demon-spawn run up and down the aisles screaming at the tops of their lungs the whole time.

When I spoke to the theatre staff about it, they blew me off so that they could continue talking about about “OMG, Bobby is SO cute!”

Fellowship of the Ring. There’s a saying that you can only see a movie for the first time once. During this showing, the movie began while the soundtrack continued to play Worst Hits of the 80s. There’s a huge logical disconnect in seeing Isuldur slay Sauron to the strains of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

6

My wife and I went to see Wall-e in a theater in Malaysia and they played the wrong movie. We were there from Indonesia and pretty much just wanted to see a movie in English. Most of the rest of the theater was little kids and their parents. The previews they played were all for R rated type movies, which we thought was odd, but then the movie started and it was a Thai horror movie. In the first seen a father drowns his little daughter in a bathtub. Half the audience is kind of freaking out and the other half are trying to read their tix by the light of the cell phones. It was actually kind of funny for us, but some of those little kids had a pretty bad movie experience.

7

Until recently (like, only the last two years or so), I used to go the theater once or twice a week. I saw ~60+ movies a year in the theater. (Now, not so much-- the quality of product has really kept me at home).

Aside from the usual complaints (lousy ushers, out-of-focus/dim bulbs/blown speakers, terrible behavior from theater patrons of all ages), I have dozens of stories.

A few of the worst:

– I watched a full-on fist fight before Showgirls. Blood and everything. As entertaining as the film, if not more so.

– I’ve had the movie burnout in the last reel, with only minutes to go. Most recent examples: Superman Returns and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, both in the last ten minutes of the movie. I don’t even bother with refunds at that point, I just want to leave and go home in frustration.

– Many movies terribly inappropriate for children, yet the parents bring their kids to (just last night, Watchmen was overrun with little kids at the theater I went to. That is NOT a kids movie, in any way, shape or form. Also happened recently at a showing of The Strangers-- little kids right in front of me with their parents. WTF?).

– I don’t remember the movie, but about five or so years ago, I watched the father of a baby in a child carrier LEAVE THEIR CHILD IN THE AISLE while they got up to grab concessions. No one was watching this baby laying there in the aisle. I still kick msyelf for being so passive as to not call the cops on this guy.

– My personal favorite: after a movie, me and a buddy went to the bathroom to relieve ourselves. Long line of men waiting for the urinal. We watch one guy go up to the urinal, DROP HIS PANTS (underwear and all) to the floor, stand in front of the urinal, place his hands on the wall, and then urinate into the urinal while saying odd stuff out loud. It was quite clear the man was mentally handicapped, but everyone around him couldn’t help but give that bizarre look of “Should I be laughing now? How awkward is this?”

Ever since then, my friend and I can’t go to the urinals together without daring the other to drop trou like that guy, offering ridiculous sums of money and prizes to the other to replicate what was one of the strangest things I’ve seen in my life.

8

*F/X II *or whatever the sequel to F/X was called. It was a tremendously disappointig movie to begin with, but they showed the reels in the wrong order, so we saw the third quarter of the movie before the second quarter. As a result, they show up in a building in serious need of repair that previously looked fine; a character who has died reappears as if nothing ever happened. Because the movie was about special effects trickery and was supposed to be full of plot twists anyway, it took a while to figure out that the scenes were out of sequence–in fact one of the guys I saw it with didn’t figure it out and tried to argue later that it was supposed to be that way. It was such a lousy movie that I’m not certain showing it out of sequence actually detracted from my enjoyment – at least this way I got a good story out of it.

9

There were two separate instances at two different theaters where the crowd was very rowdy and consisted of wannabe gang members who werey rowdy, shouting comments during the movie and making it hard to hear the movie. After that, my friends and I stopped patroning those theaters.

[hijack]
But this does remind me of a time when my friends and I were behaving like the aforementioned. We went to see Gone in 60 Seconds and the movie was delayed for at least 10 minutes. A female usher came out asking everyone to have patience while they were fixing the issue. One of my friends, in the heat of the moment, yelled out, “Take it off!” Yeah, it was juvenile and any number of descriptors but damn it was funny.

10

Unfortunately, I don’t remember what the movie was, as it was probably over 20 years ago, but the projectionist mixed up two of the reels.

I’ve also had several experiences with toddlers at R-rated films; off the top of my head, “Goodfellas”, “Robocop” and “The Hunt for Red October”. At the latter, a kid sitting right behind me threw up on the floor right in the middle of the movie.

Seeing Roman Polanski’s version of “Macbeth” (much more nudity and gore than the typical Shakespeare adaptation) with a bunch of squeamish high-school girls wasn’t much fun either.

11

I went to see Highlander II when it was first released.

I win. What do I get?

{Of course, Highlander II doesn’t exist so it must be a nightmare I am remembering}

12

Coyote Ugly - mostly because that movie was showing and I couldn’t leave.

Sleepers - As a first date movie watching child molestation isn’t a good game plan.

13

As a former movie theatre usher/cashier/manager, I have plenty of stories of other people’s experiences being ruined. Nearly everything posted so far is something I have seen.

One of the strangest was some high-brow art movie that no one in the world would care about seeing. It starred that guy from that stupid movie with OJ Simpson about the stupid rocketship to Mars. It had something to do with Viet Nam, IIRC. And it opened on a Wednesday afternoon. Who the hell goes to see a movie at noon on a Wednesday?

Every Vietnamese person in a 50 mile radius, that’s who. Within 2 minutes of opening the doors, the lobby was packed. It looked like a refugee camp. And I was the only person on staff. We nearly sold out. To make matters worse, the manager got the reels in the wrong order, and it took her nearly an hour to get it straightened out.

The following Saturday night, the joint was jumping. Not only did we sell out, we oversold by a bit. The police called me to tell me that the Mayor was coming to see it, and for me to let him in for free. (It was Ray Flynn.) I had no idea what he looked like, so I charged him. And we didn’t have a seat for him. We had to get some chairs out of the manager’s office so that we could seat him in the aisle.

Being that it was December, there was no AC. All those bodies in one room generated a massive amount of heat and humidity. Much like Viet Nam.

Hey, it was a multimedia extravaganza.

14

Just in response to the title.

I have dreaded going back to theaters ever since the case 15 years ago or longer when a young couple, two rows down from us, were fucking in their seats. I can’t remember what movie was on, but it didn’t much matter.

Drive-ins are one thing. A multiplex theater at $7 a seat is another.

I may have been to theaters for movies 20-30 times since then, but I prefer getting them at home.

15

There was one we saw that must’ve been so bad that it’s seeped out of my brain. All I recall is repeatedly leaving the theater to tell the staff the movie was unwatchable. The bulb in the projector must’ve been turned down to about two candlepower – there was simply no real way to tell what was on the screen. We finally left for good about halfway through, and never went back to that theater again (not that I could’ve even if I wanted to – they closed up shop a few months later).

Then there was the screening of Hannibal. It started around nine at night…that’s the perfect time to go to a movie with your family, right? Errr, unless your family is you, your spouse, and your three kids, ages one to five. Yeah, seeing a man with his head cut open, eating his own brain – that’s appropriate for your three-year-old. Naturally, they screamed and cried throughout. Management was informed, but they apparently didn’t give a shit.

CB4 was fun – they framed it so badly that boom mikes and lighting rigs were visible in every single shot.

Oh please…what would you know about This Island Earth?

16

I went on a first date with a young lady from NZ, and as I was really swooning for her I let her pick the movie. Well, of course being a patriotic NZer she picked a product of her home country. She chose Once Were Warriors. Nothing like cinematic displays of marital rape, child molestation, and teen suicide to get things off on the right foot.

I never had much luck with date movies. Another time I went out with a date to see a movie and she picked Minority Report. I sat through the whole movie thinking, “Damnit, why didn’t I suggest a dinner date instead?”

17

I learned the easy way that Shakespeare in Love was a fantastic first date movie.

18

Are you talking about The Killing Fields (Starring Sam Waterson, who was also in Capricorn One – the movie with O.J. Simpson about a faked manned mission to mars)?

The Killing Fields was about the civil war and the eventual reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (not Vietnam) and it was not “some high brow art movie that no one cared about,” it was a box office hit and a multiple Oscar nominee (including for Best Picture). Haing S. Ngor, a genuine Khmer Rouge survivor and a non-actor, won Best Supporting Actor that year.

It’s a hell of a good movie. One of the most affecting and accurate movies about that conflict and its aftermath ever made.

Now you want to talk about miserable experiences in a movie theater – I sat through The Love Guru last year. Worse than that was I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and even worse than that – the worst, most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had watching a movie – was Little Man, that Wayan Brothers thing where one of them was a CGI midget.

19

Mr. S once took his young nephews to see Ernest Goes to Camp. They showed the reels out of order. He thinks he was the only one who noticed.

20

Well, yeah, I know that NOW. Back then I just thought it was some artsy farsty nothing of a flick that would close in a week. Kind of like all the movies we got at that theatre.