Why not to visit the cinema

with acknowledgments to DrSpin

I dearly love a good movie but I simply cannot cope with visiting the cinema:

1. It is too loud.
2. People laugh at all the wrong places. I have to restrain myself from standing on the seat and shouting at them that they are stupid and should ask for a refund because they are missing the whole, usually obvious, point.
3. I always manage to sit in front of an irritating family overloaded with fat kids who whine about wanting to eat more junk food. The parents do not take kindly to my intervention.
4. People talk. They never stop talking. It’s not so much the talking that bothers me but the fact that they pay decent money for a ticket and then pay no attention to the film. I become very frustrated on their behalf.
5. Cinemas do not any more have comfortable seats. They are like the chairs you have to sit in when you are being interviewed for a job you do not want by people who are not fit to clean your shoes.
6. Patrons arrive late and giggle while clambering over one to get to their seats. Occasionally they are drunk or adolescent or both.
   
   In extreme cases, they then discover they have gone to the wrong seats and clamber back, giggling harder.
7. Patrons leave their mobiles ’phones switched on so the ringing of incoming calls interrupts the movie for the entire audience.
   
   In extreme cases, they take the damned calls, speaking at a volume and length convenient to them. The nadir is reached when the “ringing” tone is set to some jolly, and lengthy, tune.

I could go on. But, alas, my blood is starting to boil.

Occasionally I go and, every time I do, all my frustrations are re-confirmed so I content myself with video releases. This is unsatisfactory, I know; what is the point of spending $120 million on a superb production if somebody like me watches it on a 21" screen? Thus, I tend to be a little behind the pace but I get there in the end.

The Home Page of Father Ignatius | The Stories of Father Ignatius