7 things you only know if you grew up loving the cinema
It’s a tough old time to be a cinema. New Bond flick No Time To Die has been delayed (again), other major studios have announced heavily-delayed schedules or even pulled some films from cinema release entirely, and now Cineworld is temporarily closing all its venues in the US, the UK, and Ireland.
In honour of these embattled institutions, here are seven things you’ll understand if you grew up absolutely loving the cinema…
Sure, cinema popcorn costs more than the pack of Butterkist in the supermarket over the road. But the only time you really craved an enormous bucket of the stuff growing up (and crucially were encouraged to go for it by your adults) was at the movies. And no bucketful, however massive, ever defeated you.
Whatever the grown-ups might say, trying and failing to lie about your age is an essential part of teendom, and the cinema sets you up nicely for being repeatedly refused entry to pubs.
You probably dodged the old 12 certificate, and talked your way into a few 15s, but when you tried sidling into Silence of the Lambs you were immediately called out and blacklisted.
Note to self: don’t claim to be 31 with your homework peeking out of your bag.
Those who did successfully see Hannibal Lecter having an old friend for dinner, may have wondered whether the sleepless nights were really worth risking their fake ID. We all had at least one movie that scared us witless as kids – Jaws, the Blair Witch Project, How the Grinch Stole Christmas – probably viewed through our fingers.
There’s a reason cinemas are staples of teen dating, and are less so in later life. “It won’t be awkward,” we thought, “because we can just watch the movie, and then we can talk about the movie.” This is true, right up to the point where you mistake them reaching for the armrest as an early attempt at hand holding.
There are two ways you might have learned this lesson. You might have sat there silently seething while A Quiet Place was irretrievably ruined by the loud snacking and chatting of a group two rows back. Or you might have been in that group, and received a sharp lecture in public morality from your irate fellow moviegoers.
Most Netflix-watchers now have a list of movies they’ve never finished. Maybe they got bored, they got side-tracked by another tab, the phone rang, or – by far most likely – they fell asleep. Cinemas force you to engage with a film, with no distractions, mobiles off, and enough surround sound to wake Sleeping Beauty. Two hours really isn’t that long.
Given the litany of horrors that unfold on screen – shark attacks, satanic cults, people being thrown into wood chippers, and the social manoeuvrings of Regina George in Mean Girls – reality often looks tame by comparison.
Homework was rubbish. But axe murderers are worse.
