There’s nothing relaxing or peaceful about going to the cinema these days
Ihave plenty of respect for Dame Helen Mirren, but I couldn’t help but laugh in disbelief at her comments last week on the joys of going to the cinema.
Speaking at a film convention in Las Vegas, she laid into Netflix for destroying the experience, telling the crowd that there is “nothing like sitting in a cinema”. She narrated the scene: “The lights go down. That incredible moment of relaxation and anticipation because you know you’re going to be entertained for two hours.”
It’s true that going to the flicks did used to be like being alone in a deep tank. One barely noticed other people, which is why it was always a go-to for horny teenagers keen on surreptitious back-row action.
But Mirren clearly missed the memo: those days, at least in the UK, are well and truly over.
There is nothing peaceful or relaxing about the cinema now. At a recent outing to my local Vue, I found myself sandwiched between two couples who spent the entire film eating vast quantities of sugary popcorn
from each other’s cardboard tubs. In both cases, the man had emptied a mega-pack of M&M’s into the popcorn. The relentless crunching and aroma made it hard to concentrate on, let alone enjoy, the film.
During a Cineworld visit, a whole gang of teenagers kept coming and going for the first hour, eventually sitting down and spending the rest of the film giggling and fidgeting, and treating the rest of us to the flashing of their phone screens.
When, the following week, a friend suggested going to the cinema, I said fine, but please, a
posh one. I can’t take more flashing phone screens or mega-snacks. So we opted for the Everyman.
Silly me. I had forgotten that the Everyman has led the wave of cinemas becoming not simply a viewing experience with comfortable seats and fancy snacks, but all-singing, all-dancing and extremely costly cocktail bar-cumrestaurant. Right until the film starts, and often after, waiters are coming through with trays, desperately trying to find the right person – invariably at the end of your row – to whom to deliver the Campari, hummus and burger ordered and paid for through a ludicrous and wholly misplaced system of in-seat service.
It’s clear that cinemas are in the midst of a serious identity crisis, but the problem is not so much Netflix as our inability to sit still without either stuffing our faces or checking our phones.