Good Movie Manners Cost Nothing

[ladyjane]

Jan 11, 2014 19:57:19 GMT -4 hushhush said:

ladyjane, I am to the point that I will not go to see an animated movie unless it's a late show and the film has been out for about 3 1/2 weeks because I can't deal with those types of kids (and the laissez-faire parenting of said kids!). The last time I went to an afternoon show this kid a few rows in front of me loudly slurpped the dregs of his soda ceaselessly for about 15 minutes during the movie. Someone in the theater finally yelled "IT'S EMPTY!!!" which prompted the parent to take the soda away or make the kid quit before a riot broke out.

That just makes me ask why the parent wasn't already annoyed by it? Why do you need a prompt that your kid is being unacceptably noisy? Can't YOU hear it? Doesn't it annoy YOU? It would certainly bug me, sitting right beside it.

[hushhush]

I know!! I never cease to be amazed at some parents' abilities to block these things out. I can only guess that their home is a three-ring circus of insanity. These are probably the same kids that scream or cry or repeat some annoying noise in the middle of the grocery store or a restaurant while the parent taps away on an iPhone, oblivious. I can only assume that the parent has learned to cope with it instead of, y'know, actually disciplining the kids, but when that three-ring circus of insanity goes out into public it becomes a problem! The rest of us are not going to block it out or ignore it.

[Deleted]

Whispers: My son spilled his popcorn at Frozen. But if it makes it any better, it was normal sized and he was very upset about it?

[hushhush]

Reading ladyjane's post, it doesn't sound like a similar situation, BoroKat. There's a difference between spilling and tossing freely with wild abandon.

I would also like to add that movie theater popcorn is some mighty expensive confetti! My parents would rarely ever buy concessions when we went to the movies because they were so over-priced. If we invested $10 in a tub of popcorn and I intentionally threw it on the floor, not only would I have been chewed out and made to clean it up, I probably would have been docked two weeks' allowance to pay for it!

[Neurochick]

I put this on the current events thread, but I guess it could go here as well.

Everybody's crazy.

[sumire]

Jan 11, 2014 19:57:19 GMT -4 hushhush said:

I distinctly remember getting the side-eye from some people when my father brought me to see Platoon. He is a Vietnam vet, and he had seen the movie prior to taking me. He said that it was the most realistic Vietnam film he had seen to date and he wanted me to see it to better understand what it was like over there.

Platoon is one of the only movies I can remember my parents going to see without me--they totally would have side-eyed you and your dad if they hadn't known his reasons and that he'd pre-screened it.

I would also like to add that movie theater popcorn is some mighty expensive confetti! My parents would rarely ever buy concessions when we went to the movies because they were so over-priced. If we invested $10 in a tub of popcorn and I intentionally threw it on the floor, not only would I have been chewed out and made to clean it up, I probably would have been docked two weeks' allowance to pay for it!

In recent years, I've noticed that the tiniest size of popcorn (not even enough to last one person an entire movie) is super-expensive, and then the sizes get, like, exponentially larger for a negligible price increase, and the largest size always includes a free refill. On the rare instances when my group has bought a bathtub of popcorn, we've never taken them up on the refill, because my god, who needs that much popcorn? (I have an aunt who always gets a refill on the way out and takes it home, and someday I need to learn what the hell she does with all that popcorn. With the oil, it's not like she can use it for packing material or Christmas-tree garlands.)

I'm not surprised parents can be cavalier about their kids wasting popcorn (from a financial, not a behavioral, point of view), is what I'm saying.

[laboria]

Went to see TYAS yesterday in a small theater. The two ladies next to me (one seat between us) whisper-talked through the movie, then when I glanced at them they had a large phone/small tablet out looking at it. As Chris Rock said, it ain't right what the guy in FL did in the movie theater, but I understand.

[ElleCee]

Went to see Spiderman last night. Some chick was there with her kids and obviously she didn't want to be there because she kept checking her phone which had the world's biggest screen. I gave her three times before walking over to her seat and asking her to stop turning it on. I'm thinking you're not being a subtle as you think you are because your huge glowing screen is interfering with theatre screen. She did stop checking it though.

[Shalamar]

My husband and I went to a matinee for Edge of Tomorrow at the cheap theatre yesterday. Our experience was:

• Despite the movie starting at 1:15, the theatre employees didn't open the doors until 1:00.
• The theatre was pitch-black when we entered. No lights whatsoever. (They came on later - about two minutes before the show started.)
• No sound with the previews until they'd been playing for several minutes.
• Ten minutes after the show started, three people entered the theatre and started yelling and giggling at the top of their lungs. "START THE MOVIE OVER! HEEE HEE HEE!"
• One of those three seemed to find everything funny (I suspect drugs or booze or both, because I heard a "pop-fsssssh" of a can being opened). At one point a minor character called Tom Cruise a "coward", and I thought this girl was going to bust a gut, she was laughing so hard.
• After several minutes of that, another older lady and myself yelled "WILL YOU KIDS KEEP QUIET?" They did so for a very short time, then started up again.
• It was at that point that I went outside to get an usher. THEN they finally shut up (mostly).

[Neurochick]

Jul 31, 2014 12:37:36 GMT -4 Shalamar said:

My husband and I went to a matinee for Edge of Tomorrow at the cheap theatre yesterday. Our experience was:

• Despite the movie starting at 1:15, the theatre employees didn't open the doors until 1:00.
• The theatre was pitch-black when we entered. No lights whatsoever. (They came on later - about two minutes before the show started.)
• No sound with the previews until they'd been playing for several minutes.
• Ten minutes after the show started, three people entered the theatre and started yelling and giggling at the top of their lungs. "START THE MOVIE OVER! HEEE HEE HEE!"
• One of those three seemed to find everything funny (I suspect drugs or booze or both, because I heard a "pop-fsssssh" of a can being opened). At one point a minor character called Tom Cruise a "coward", and I thought this girl was going to bust a gut, she was laughing so hard.
• After several minutes of that, another older lady and myself yelled "WILL YOU KIDS KEEP QUIET?" They did so for a very short time, then started up again.
• It was at that point that I went outside to get an usher. THEN they finally shut up (mostly).

If people are going to act like that, then they should wait until the movie comes on Netflix. That way they can take their clothes off, throw popcorn at the screen and do whatever they like because they'll be in their own home. Some people act like the movie theater is their own home, dumbasses.