h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

I've never been a big cinema-goer. I'm much happier within the luxury of an armchair and the comfort of my own home, watching whatever on the small screen of television.

Before yesterday, the last time I went to the cinema was to see "The Phantom Menace". A guy at work convinced me that I would be missing out on a piece of history if I didn't see it on the big screen, so I plucked up the courage (I'm a semi-agoraphobiac) in the last couple of weeks of its run to see the movie. I would probably have enjoyed the film much more had the Asian couple behind me not talked at a normal level throughout the movie in whatever language they call their own. I'm hardly the confrontational type, so I sat and seethed instead, which affected my focus on the matter at hand (i.e. Jar-Jar Binks and co.).

After that, I vowed to never enter a movie theatre again. With video, I can adjust the environment to suit my current feelings. If I need to stop it and go to the toilet, I can (does anybody else suffer from a need to go to the toilet more frequently during an action movie? I call it adrenaline piss, and it's always clear... odd), and if I'm hungry or thirsty, I can pause the movie and take care of business. Nobody need disturb me, and I can become absorbed in what's happening on the screen for a couple of hours. I love it.

People say to me that the audio and visual aspects of the cinema make it worth attending, but I don't need surround sound and digital effects. I'm not so stupid as to think that I'm actually standing on Tatooine. I have an imagination which I don't need enhanced by theatrics, no matter how expensive.

So anyway, my dad convinced me to go with him and see "American Beauty" yesterday. I would have happily waited for the video, but he was so eager to see it again (for his third time), and to see it with me (bonding, you know) that I capitulated. In truth, it was a really great movie. It confronted lots of taboo subjects and caused not a small amount of discomfort around the theatre.

And that's where it all fell apart for me, once again. You see, we went around lunchtime on a Tuesday. Kids in school, most adults at work, so the cinema was say a third full, with generally middle-aged people, the sort that find it hardest to understand the world today. And although the movie was humorous, it wasn't 'Jim Carrey ha-ha'. It was the sort of humour where you smile knowingly and ruefully. But these people laughed aloud at the most inopportune times, and you could tell the laughter was a cover for ill-feelings. I felt it really spoilt the moment each time. The film was rather intense, and plenty to think about, making valid points about culture, but these people just ruined it by laughing throughout.

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.