Countless newspaper articles bemoan the fact that audiences numbers are going down for the movies. The pundits come up with different reasons, ranging from the economy to the dearth of good movies. The reason we don't go as much? The fucking audience. This was brought home to me last night as we tried to sit through Speed Racer. I grew up with that cartoon and always loved it. I bought the complete series on DVD. My daughters started watching the show and loved it. So, we were looking forward to seeing the movie. It was a 7:30 showing at a nearby megaplex. I didn't expect too many people there to see Speed Racer. It's been in the theaters for awhile and it didn't get good reviews. So, I was somewhat shocked when we walked into the shoebox sized theater and saw that most of the seats were taken. We got into the first row of the stadium seats and waited for the movie to start. Enter the "family from hell"..... It looked like a mother, father and about 5 kids. One was a toddler boy. This is a PG movie. Not a G movie. There were so many of them, that they had to split up. One of the girls ended up a seat away from me. The toddler spawn was sat right behind me, of course. And was immediately restless. They weren't the only ones who had toddlers and small children, who were obviously going to be bored by the movie. But, they were the worst. The whole family was quite noisy. Chatting and making a lot of noise during the previews. "Okay". I thought, "I will give tolerate them yakking through the previews....." The movie starts.... The brat behind me keeps up a nonstop dialog. His inept mother keeps "shushing" him but it does no good. Occasionally, the whole family would giggle at some of the things the undisciplined little brat would do. Do they think they're in their fucking living room!? Other audience members shushing the kids and dirty looks didn't seem to get across to these idiots that they were ruining the movie for everyone else. We missed out on key plot points and dialogue due to being unable to hear. Every time that little brat opened his mouth, I would be distracted. And then, I would tense up. I would have to calm down before I could get back into the movie. Halfway into the movie, my daughter Amanda leaned towards me and said, "I can't sit through anymore of this!" I could see that she was as tense as I was. I was going to suggest that we leave and just wait for it to come out on DVD. But, we thought of just coming back for a later show in a weekday. So, for the first time in my life, I walked out on a movie. We stood up and started to walk towards the aisle. The brat daughter to my left had her feet blocking the aisle. I just started to walk towards her. If her legs were in my way, I was going to walk through them. At that point, I didn't give a shit. I was so pissed. One look at my face though, and she sheepishly moved her legs. I turned towards the mother of the devil spawn and hissed, "Thanks a lot lady!" through clenched teeth. As we were leaving though, it occured to me that we had just spent just over $30 to come here. I wanted my money back. Or, at least a voucher for some tickets for a later date. Oddly enough, no one argued with me. Perhaps it was because they didn't want to confront a 6 foot tall homicidal bitch who looked ready to tear the theater apart. I, and my daughters, were livid. We ranted all the way home. And, we are still pissed about it this morning. Are these people to lazy to hire a babysitter? And, why don't they do more to keep their kids quiet!? I miss the old days of ushers, standing in the back of the theater. Waiting for moments like these, where they would ask noisy people to quiet down, or leave. People with crying babies would be asked to remove them. Since the vouchers are good at any AMC theater, we are going to go to one that's a little further away and with a later showing. We are hoping that by then, anyone with noisy brats will be at home putting them to bed.
Posted by Valkyre at May 26, 2008 09:02 AM