I was wondering how many people demand refunds for movies they don’t like. I know some do, but I never understood that. Personally, I don’t ask for refunds unless there was a technical problem with the showing. I figure it’s a gamble going in. If I hear bad things about a movie and I see it anyway, then shame on me.
I doubt you’d be very successful anywhere. With all the Hollywood garbage out there, they’d be refunding money right and left.
Actually I had heard awhile back that some theaters were prefectly willing to provide refunds for movies if you didn’t like them. I have yet to ask for one for the same reason Jet Jaguar mentioned.
As a former theater manager, I can attest this is not true–we were never “perfectly willing”, but we did it anyway to get a customer off our backs. However, I think you’ll find they very rarely are actual money-back refunds (especially after the movie’s over), but more often free passes (although sometimes a free popcorn would be enough), which guarantees that the customer comes back. Given the wealth of information available about a movie, from movie reviews to the MPAA’s own site, a certain amount of responsibility needs to be assumed by the patron to inform themselves about critics or directors they trust, storylines or genres they prefer, and an understanding that any subjective entertainment experience involves some risk.
At the risk of inciting wrath, I’m really not sure it should be very easy to do this, based on the reasons stated by ArchiveGuy. There just isn’t much of an excuse. In every “WORST.MOVIE.EVER.” thread I’ve ever read, which has been a lot (or similar threads) the main offenders were movies that were absolutely SAVAGED by the press and the reviewers. Take Battlefield Earth, for example. There was simply no reason to think this was a good movie. It was being universally panned, and not in a mild, noncommittal way. You can maybe argue a case that it was even worse than you expected, but you could not possibly have thought it would be good, not if you read anything at all about it.
I see people often saying how they don’t read critics and don’t trust them and so forth, but again, the critics are almost always on the money with bad movies. If they say something is bad, it almost always is.
Also, people seem to be in a mad rush to see everything these days. Many of these bad movies, regardless of reviews, got horrible word-of-mouth after they premiered. A movie that opens to $100 million and then immediately drops to $10 million might not be very good. If you feel you must see everything before anyone else and before it’s reviewed or commented on, you have to assume some risk for seeing bad things. Waiting a week or two will usually reveal many of the over-hyped crapfests.
So there you go, cast me in the Pit, but I think that if you don’t read reviews or listen to word of mouth or wait to see what the general reaction to a movie is, you forfeit the right to get your money back.
I’ve occasionally left a movie 20-30 minutes in and asked for a refund. Got it most of the time. But I wouldn’t request a refund if the film was more than, say, half over. If you haven’t figured out that a movie’s crap by then, you don’t deserve your cash back.
As Legomancer said, caveat emptor.
I disagree with you, Legomancer (but I’ll skip the wrath),
First of all I frequently read two opposing reviews of a movie. Second, trailers today are notorious for making you believe a movie is about one thing then you find it’s about something else.
[pet peeve] Why not make the trailer like the movie or make the movie you are going to advertise?![/end peeve]
To the OP, if a movie is BAD or misrepresented (by the first half) I ask for my money back. And despite what ArchiveGuy says, managers are always friendly and (apparently) happy to refund my money.
How do you know they are bad if you don’t see them?
Easy, but be prepared to disagree. I am of the opinion that most movies suck. Hollywood has lost the benefit of the doubt with me. I do not have to prove their movies suck, they have to prove that their movies are worth seeing. To that end, I first look at the trailers and the general idea of the movie. That eliminates most of them right away.
Second, go to Rotten Tomatoes, or simply check several reviewers. If the majority of them are saying something is crap, maybe it is. If the ones giving positive reviews are saying “only sucks half as much as I thought” take that with a grain of salt. As I said in the thread about bad movies you saw in the theater, most of the ones listed could have been avoided if people had simply looked at the reviews. Nearly every movie I’ve ever seen people bitch about was also torn to shreds by reviewers.
Third, don’t go see it right away. Wait and see what happens after it’s been out a week or so. Word of mouth is very important. Did it have a staggering opening and then immediately drop off sharply? It’s probably an overhyped piece of crap. Most studios are banking on this hit-and-run method where they make you think you should see this immediately so you don’t listen to critics or word of mouth and find out how bad it is. Don’t do it. There’s no reason you can’t go see it later if it turns out to be good. I didn’t see Memento when it opened, I waited until I saw it was getting good reviews and good word of mouth. Then I saw it, and I didn’t have a million people in the theater with me also.
You’re free to disagree with me - most people do - but I just don’t see saying “I don’t want to know anything about this movie or read the opinions of others on it or wait to see how it does, I must see it immediately and then gripe that it wasn’t good.”
Well, I won’t disagree as much as you might think. You have some very valid points.
However, I try to avoid too much of the trailers because, as I said earlier, they make you expect one thing then you are disapointed when it’s something else.
Additionally, I frequently disagree with critics. So they are not a good source for me. I’m sure a lot of this is dictated by what one expects from movies. You might like art films and I might like escapism. Critics would favor your choices of ‘good’ movies.
The one thing that is the hardest to escape from is hype. I’ll bet if there were no hype to big movies, we would like them better because they would have less to live up to. I believe this is an inescapable part of the human makeup and unfortunately Hollywood.
Regarding point two, I would like to see all the major critics be made to make a living off of movies that they made or produced alone. If their sole sourse of income was box-office sucsess, they would be churning out the same crap they rail against. Think about that!
Grrr…‘source’ and ’ succ…oh, nevermind…
Preview, preview, preview…
I once read a column by a film critic (I believe it was Roger Ebert) addressing this phenomena. He said the studios make trailers for the film they wished the director made, not what he actually made.
I keep seeing people say they disagree with critics, but look at rotten tomatoes. If you’ve got 50 critics, and 40 of them say a movie is bad, do you really think, “Well, none of those 40 have my taste in movies.” Also, that’s where part 3 comes in. Wait for word of mouth and to see how the movie performs. If you don’t trust professional critics, trust people you know who have seen it. Trust the fact that the theater is empty after the opening weekend because enough people figured out it sucked.
All I’m saying is, if I ate every piece of food I saw, regardless of how it might taste or agree with me, I wouldn’t complain when I got a stomach ache. I would, however, probably still make very bad analogies.
When you buy a ticket, are you promised a good time? I don’t think so. You’re promised the opportunity to see a movie. There’s no reasonable way for the theater owner to know your taste in movies and how well any given movie will satisfy you. The theater owner does not view each film and decide which ones are good, and refuse to show movies which are bad. I don’t see how you can hold the theater owner responsible for whether or not you like the movie.
If you throw a fit, they might give you a refund, sure. “The customer is always right” is a wise business practice. It is not, however, a universal truism.
Do trailers use somewhat deceptive techniques to make the movie look appealing to as broad an audience as possible? Say it ain’t so!
[sub]Hint: buying a particular brand of beer will not actually make you more attractive to the opposite sex.[/sub]
I always read Ebert’s reviews of movies before I go see them. Some people don’t like Ebert or don’t like critics in general. I happen to agree with Ebert most of the time. I always read the whole review so that I know what I’m getting into. For example, he gave Tomb Raider three stars. He said in his review that it was basically dumb fun with lots of action. So I saw it and I liked it. I was not expecting high art. I wanted a silly action film, I got it, I was happy. Now, I also read his review (and a few other reviews) of Pearl Harbor. I went to see it anyway. Would it have been nice to get my money back? Sure, and I would have liked those three hours of my life back as well. But I would never expect someone to give me back my money, and I would never ask. I chose to see the movie. I knew what I was getting into. I can live with it.
Just FYI: My brother-in-law used to be a manager at a movie theatre. They do not give refunds after the first 15 minutes of a movie (which basically will get you through the previews). However, they had several (and by “several” I mean “everyone who went to see it”) people complain about the badness of Freddy Got Fingered. They finally just started handing out free passes to people who asked, because it was too much hassle to explain to them nicely that it was not the theatre’s fault that they were too stupid to realize that a movie like that would be bad.
(His theatre also has a policy against giving refunds for movies that are showing popular trailers. So if someone went to see Pearl Harbor just to see the LOTR trailer, they would not be getting back their money).
Dammit, there goes another one of my claims to fame. I’m not the SD’s only former theater manager.
Where and when, ArchiveGuy?
Legomancer, are you kidding me? You check out 50 critics for every movie you consider? Frankly I find it hard to believe anyone would go to half those lengths. And even if most critics do agree with your tastes, it ain’t gonna happen everytime. And there have been plenty of times when friends and critics just loooooove a movie so I go all jicked up only to find it yet another lame Hollywood film. Naw, I think I’ll keep thinking for myself.
Podkayne, No I don’t feel I’m promised a good movie. You roll the dice, you take ya chances. Like a lot of people, I’ve sat through hundreds (?) of clunkers and walked out with the ‘oh well’ attitude. But if a movie is especially bad and I have better things to do I will politely ask for a refund. If they don’t want to give one that’s fine. I’ve never thrown a fit nor never will. I just don’t see the harm in asking. My experience is that managers are always polite and more than willing to give it. Archiveguy is speaking for himself - not all managers.
Um. Go to rottentomatoes.com and you’ll see what he means. You see about a sentence from each critic (linked to the full critique) with either a nice ripe red tomato (they liked it) or a big splatted green one (they didn’t like it)… it’s pretty easy to tell within about half a second what the proportion is of critic who liked/didn’t like a given film is.