A Night at the Bijoux

Tonight my wife and I went out to a movie. Yes, I realize that may be a bit surprising to you. Luddite that I am I’m not a big fan of the ‘Magic Lantern’ shows they have nowadays but on occasion my wife and I will favor one of these $9 per seat rip-off acts with our presence. This particular one brought a few thoughts to my mind this evening.

Firstly, when the hell did we decide that $9 was an appropriate price for a movie ticket? It’s not as if once you get in there you can load up on free refreshments. You buy the overpriced seat and then you can treat yourself to a $4 soda or a $5 bag of candy. This is quite unacceptable. I must admit that the Cineplex was quite crowded so the business model must be holding up nicely despite my revulsion. You would think that the 20 solid minutes of ads and movie previews could help defray the cost of the movie a bit. Of course they have to have 20 minutes of ads though to allow the 50% of the audience that comes late a chance to find a seat. Society has gone to hell when you can’t get people to show up for a 7:30 show until 7:50.

Secondly, it has become apparent that whatever desensitization to the ‘horror flick’ genre I may have accumulated as a child has completely worn off. I remember as a lad actually going to the theatre with my mom and pop and watching a movie that somehow involved a lot of blood. The only bit I can remember is the sight of blood coming down someone’s downspouts and a bit of a kerfuffle at the ticket window trying to get me in. The point is that I regularly watched this crap even as a wee lad with my pop and don’t recall being terrified at any point. I was used to seeing extreme violence and the like.

Well 30 years later either I’ve become an utter pansy or these movies have come a long way. There was an advertisement before the movie that turned my stomach. For some reason these people were strapped down in chairs with iron boxes on their heads into which tubes fed. It’s apparently supposed to remind one of this movie ‘saw’ that I’ve never ‘seen’ but is really an ad for some Toyota vehicle. Then, further on in the movie previews, there was a preview for a movie ‘Vacancy’ in which a couple checks into a lonely motel in the middle of nowhere only to find that they’re locked in and are going to be tortured and killed by the proprietor. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve been in some hotel rooms in my day but my wife and I just looked at each other with horror-stricken faces. What kind of sick crap are people going to the movies to watch anyway? It’s hard to even watch TV nowadays without commercials for this mindless rot coming on. I don’t want to see people being tortured or a chick with a machinegun for an artificial leg. Give me a break.

Lastly, and finally, comes the actual movie and just like at the theatre it takes a LONG damn time to get to the movie. We saw “Reign Over Me” and I have to say that I found it dizzyingly relatable. The manner in which the Adam Sandler character deals with his emotional problems by just doing something, just keeping busy, is something I tend to use myself. As long as you keep moving along, keep busy, you can ignore just about anything. On the flip side, the Don Cheadle character just needs to have something beyond his current sphere of existence of family and work. I think a lot of men (including me) suffer from this ‘life myopia’ in which we somehow shed friends we had before marriage and over years find that we’ve misplaced something really important. A lot of people replace this missing piece with involvement in a church but I’m not sure there’s an *ahem* ‘church’ *ahem* around here for my type. But anyway, this turned out to be an exceptional little bit of entertainment. It’s always a bit unnerving when you find yourself relating personally to characters who later get committed to the care of a ‘qualified psychiatric professional’ but as long as I keep busy at something for a while I think I can ignore that…