There are several categories of moviegoers that I hate, which I’ll soon get to. A movie costs $20+ for a couple these days which seems to be rising as quickly as the value of a moviegoing experience is dropping. My desire to actually go to the movies has been nearly beaten out of me by the awful experiences I tend to have at every one. I could handle an isolated incident or two, but when it starts happening at EVERY single movie I attend, then I know that it’s becoming a serious problem.
I despise every idiot who brings their child(ren) into a non-G rated movie and does not keep them quiet. A 3 year old child has absolutely NO reason to be at an R-rated movie. But if you are stupid enough to actually bring your little runts to a movie showing gratuitous violence, sex, language, and other R-rated material, then shut them the hell up if they start their mindless babbling!!! This also includes, but is not limited to, their cute tendency to kick the back of the seats in front of them, their cute tendency to roam around the section of the theater that you are seated in, and their cute tendency to drop their toys, prompting you to have the gall to ask me to retrieve them for them (so they can proceed to drop them again - yay!)
I also despise all you complete morons who laugh at the funny-the-first-few-times anti-cell phone commercials that movie theaters run these days, THEN proceed to not only leave your cell phone on, but also ANSWER them and speak loudly during the ensuing conversation (after all, there’s a movie going on, how can the person on the other line hear you unless you speak VERY loudly??)
While I’m at it, I’ll also throw out a quick ‘SCREW YOU’ to the people who think they’re cool for spouting profanity when there are young children present in a public setting (or heck, even if there aren’t children present in a public setting.) At a Mr. 3000 screening last night, some idiot apparently thought it was cool to creatively use the F word a few times in front of the dozen or so kids that were seated near his pompous ass. Thanks, we were all amazed at your skilled & proficient use of the English language!
I’m sure other people have covered this rant before, but I just felt I had to add my two cents on the subject…
The wife and I have taken to sitting in the last row when cinemagoing, since it seems to have become inevitable that, should we sit anywhere else, it will be the seats directly in front of those chosen by talkative teenagers who enter the theater after the trailers start.
Christ. Here’s a hint: if you want to have a 90-minute conversation with your friends, take it outside. Don’t pay $11 each to sit in a dark room and compete with the sound system so that you ruin the movie for everyone within 30 feet of you.
The worst in recent history was when I saw Frieda. A twenty-something girl one row back and about six seats to my right was whispering to her friend constantly: pss-psst-pssSSSsst-psspss-psstpsst during dialogue scenes, so I cast a glare her way catching the eye of her friend. And then when some action would occur and the score come in to play it was bzzz-buzzzt-bzzZZzz-bzzt, so I audibly shushed them. And then finally, a scene occurred where the characters raised their voices (unheard of in latin culture, I’m sure) we all got treated to yak-yak-yakity-yadda-yak. I couldn’t believe it… this girl was raising her voice to be heard over the film. At that point I stood up, leaned over my seat, and said clearly “If you want to have a conversation, PLEASE GO OUTSIDE,” which was met by several nods and 'yea’s from those in the vicinity.
Which made me wonder who to be more irritated at: the one talkative person, or the 40 people closer to her than me who sat there and didn’t say anything to her. Especially her friend.
Wow, a kindred spirit! I always thought I just had a special “gift” for always attracting the talkers. There have been times when we’ve changed seats three times in an attempt to escape, only to have a new talker inevitably plunk down right behind us.
I have never had the guts to do more than glare, partly because I can’t help feeling that if the talker is really that bad, surely SOMEONE else nearby would be irritated enough to complain. But then I guess if everyone thinks that way… :smack: Then there are people in the world like my wife who, while she sympathizes and goes along with the seat changing, is rarely bothered by talkers; she says she can just “tune it out”.
I have totally given up on going to the movies, for just the reason that it’s almost always more frustrating, irritating, and annoying than it is enjoyable. The big screen TV may not be quite the visual experience as a movie screen, but the guaranteed silence more than makes up for that in terms of the overall experience.
That ain’t nothin’. You attract the talkers. I attract the translators. Not once, not twice, but three times, the group of people directly behind or in front of me has consisted of three or four people, of whom only one apparently spoke English. That person took it upon himself (it was a male all three times) to translate the ENTIRE MOVIE, every single line, to his compatriots. Now, I have spent time in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where there is a significant Hispanic minority. I have lived in Plattsburgh, New York, which receives significant traffic from French-speaking Montreal. In either place, I would not have been surprised (although equally annoyed) to hear such translation taking place. But all three times this has happened to me, it has occurred in my hometown of Roanoke, Virginia.
The first two times, the language being spoken was Spanish, so I was forced to sit in silence and eventually move. The third, however, was in French, my langue deuxième de choix. So, I leaned over, uttered a polite “excusez moi, mais…”, and told them gently but firmly where to stick it. They elected to move to the front row, where I could not hear them. Fait accompli.
Ouch, I feel for you…I’m actually surprised I haven’t experienced any translators. I’ve had idiots speaking other languages nearby, but no one has bothered actually translating for them. That is rough!
bughunter, thanks for reminding me that I also hate the morons who are RIGHT NEXT TO these people and don’t say a single word all movie long. Are they really not bothered at all by all their annoyances?? I often feel like we’re the only people annoyed in the theater, though realistically I know this can’t be the case.
A few weekends ago, SkipMagic and I were treated to an entirely new (for us, anyway) moviegoing phenomenon. Not kids TALKING in the theatre, but kids instant-messaging each other with their cell phones! All in all, not bad if you’re sitting in front of them (after all, they’re not making any noise), but a real pain in the ass if you’re a few rows behind, and your concentration on the screen is marred by brightly -lit cell phone screens floating around in the dark, just within reach of your peripheral vision.
I must have some sort of magic movie annoyance dampening field becasue in all the years I have gone to the movies, (and I’ve seen at least a dozen this year alone) there has been exactly ONE instance where there was a crying baby in the audience (which was during The Stepford Wives so I welcomed the diversion) and have had no other crowd related incidences of movie ruination.
I don’t think I’ve ever even had that problem. Not to suggest in any way that it’s all y’all’s fault, but I always go to particular theatres or show-times to avoid the kinds of crowds that you guys are complaining about. Late shows, matinees, art houses, anything to avoid lots of people, especially teens. If you’re going to go to the opening night showing at 8 p.m., you’re going to get people who are out on Friday night to have a good time. I usually go when it’s just the people that really want to see the movie.
Despite all this, we must show tolerance and respect to those living in the inner city, who practice a time-honored cultural tradition of yelling back at the characters in the movie. They may seem annoying, but it’s only our racism and bigotry that guides us to believe that their actions are detracting from an otherwise enjoyable cinematic experience.
We must be open to such differences, embrace diversity, and not only tolerate but encourage such an interactive movie viewing experience by those who, a mere two generations ago, were often forced to sit in the balcony of a movie theater, if they were allowed in at all.
And there we were, napkins balled up in our fists, ready to be thrown at the cell phone people. (The napkins, not our fists. Unfortunately.) But before we let loose with our paper-thin rage, I leaned over at asked them to turn their phones off.
They did.
Good thing, too. Flying napkins can give a person quite the paper-cut–and we didn’t want their blood on our hands. Or popcorn.
I realize you were being ironic and all but to insinuate that race is a factor in this sort of behaviour *is * a bit bigoted. While I’ve yet to experience the phenomenon personally, I’ve known a number of people that do it (and thus avoid watching movies with them) unabashedly and there is no preponderance of skin color in those particular people.
I’m coming down with **Elmwood ** and saying that I’ve seen it fairly often and it’s always been **one ** race, the **same ** race, which I see no reason to name here. And the worst thing is (is this the Pit? yes) the worst fucking thing is that if you ask them to be polite and shut the hell up they act like you’re at fault. The only time I didn’t ask politely wass the fucker in ROTK which I was waiting for anxiously for a year…
I nearly tore the guy’s head off. He was quiet for…oh, maybe five minutes. Then he talked through the whole film, snorted, laughed…ooo, I’m just getting myself upset. But no one else said anything.
I’ve never had too many problems in movie theaters with talkers. If someone is talking I do the “shh” once and that seems to work. There was the time however… A couple months ago I went to see “The Day After Tomorrow” in a suburban movie theater. It was a welcome distraction when Gentleman A answered his loudly ringing cell phone in the full theater and began to talk. Gentleman B politely told him to “Shut the fuck up now!” and when the cell-phone gentleman politely refuted “no, you shut the fuck up!”, Gentleman B rose and punched Gentleman A square in the gut. A skirmish broke out and both gentlemen left the theater so as to give more room to their shenanigans. Unfortunately for me, I chose to stay and watch the movie.
Do you also get the cultural translators (a.k.a. know-it-alls)? I had one of those directly behind me at Lost in Translation, explaining why certain scenes were funny to her companion.
“In Japan, when people meet they give each other business cards!”
“In Japan, they…”
“In Japan, they…”
It stopped not too far into the movie. I like to imagine that her friend elbowed her in the ribs, hard.
Wow. As much progress as we keep being told we’ve made, and then some neanderthal like Elmwood or Elenia comes along and shows you that there are still pockets of ignorance and racism. Probly always will be; we can only hope that such tiny minded assholes will become rarer and rarer and more and more marginalized. Also, we can hope that they don’t breed.
Funny, almost the same exact thing happened to me when I was seeing “The Village”. Except in my case it was a whole group of people fighting. It started over a racist comment, and when a visibly pregnant woman was thrown into the whole thing, I tried to break it up. A man shoved me while proclaiming that he hated white people, so I punched him in the neck.
I’ve been to very few movies since. The problem is that there isn’t anything for people below drinking age to do in Greenville, so they go to the movies and treat it like a cool big screen noise party than an actual opportunity to view a film. And you get situations like I had.
You think you all got it bad; I attract the ‘psychics’ - you know, the people who know what is going to happen next (except they don’t have a clue) and loudly proclaim things like, “He’s going to kill him” (he doesn’t); “Now he’ll kiss her” (ditto), “The bear is going to eat him” (the bear continues to munch on salmon), or even just “OH-OH!” (the cast falls asleep).
I want to say “Good thing they didn’t hire YOU to write the script, isn’t it?” But I’m a coward like the rest of the sheep.
My Mom, much as I love her, does that constantly; when she has knowledge of an inside joke, or something else that she feels is important that she felt would probably be above the heads of most watching in the movie, she has to tell me and Dad.
A gentle “Uhhh … others can hear you, and you might get shusshed” usually gets her to be quist. For the rest of that movie, anyhow.
The problem is that there isn’t anything for people below drinking age to do in Greenville, so they go to the movies and treat it like a cool big screen noise party than an actual opportunity to view a film. And you get situations like I had.