Last night my wife and I had tickets to see the latest Harry Potter installment, The Half-Blood Prince. Normally we would wait a week or two before venturing out to see a potentially favourite film to avoid the crowds and line-ups, and in the case of a film targeted to a younger demographic, to keep noise in the theater at a minimum. We thought we would be clever and view the film in a VIP theater that not only has assigned seating (you choose where you will sit when you buy the tickets), but also restricts people younger than age 19. It is intended to be a “high-end” cinematic experience featuring leather reclining seats, food and alcohol servers, and just an overall pish-posh atmosphere. At $16.99 a ticket, we found it worth it for a film we both really wanted to see, and didn’t want to have “ruined” by previously aforementioned potential problems.

The novelty quickly wore off though, as I noticed a few problems with this model:

• They serve food (like food food, not only popcorn and candy) to you at your seat before the movie starts. Well… “before” is a relative term. In the case of last night, it meant before the movie and 10 minutes into the start of the movie. The servers were coming up and down the aisle which was distracting in itself. I’m only glad I wasn’t sitting behind someone being served, because these people actually walk into the middle of the aisles to deliver the food.

• They serve booze. And since the human race can’t possibly resist drinking alcohol just because it is made available, people drank it (even at its inflated prices). Alcohol is a diuretic - meaning it makes you pee. Needing to pee means you need to get up and interrupt people. I noticed more people getting up to pee more than I ever have in a larger “common people” theater. Not only that people may have been a little giddier and chattier than they normally would have been being only fueled with pounds of sugar in a large pop.

• Trailers mean nothing to these people. I think a lot of people would agree that the movie trailers before the actual feature film is one of the enjoyable parts of the entire movie-going experience. Generally the lights are dimmed slightly to give people the impression that they need to shut up and start paying attention. VIPs don’t care about this, so the lights remain on, people keep talking and trailers wind up becoming just some background noise and entertainment, like the lame trivia they normally spit at you. What’s worse is that since the lights don’t dim until the feature presentation is starting, people don’t have that in-between time to shut up and pay attention. Instead that in-between time winds up being the beginning of the movie that you’ve paid too much to see.

• Volume and noise - too little and too much, respectively. Now I’ll be the first too admit that I find that theaters crank the volume levels so high nowadays that it can detract from the movie experience. VIPs evidently don’t like loudness, because the sound is much quieter in these theaters. Great! Right? Wrong. Perhaps they dropped the decibel level a little too far because I found that it felt like it was at the point where you just needed to turn it up a little more. Just a little more and perfect… just a little little more. I also found this caused another unforeseen problem. Loud volume muffles the sound of your fellow movie goers chatter, eating and rustling about. A fellow across the aisle was eating popcorn for 3/4 of the movie (how long could that bag POSSIBLY last?!?!?!). I never wanted to cause so much damage to a popcorn bag before in my life. It was like a deafening freight train of buttery kernel madness. When he finally finished I took note that the rest of the noise in the theater was a little more acceptable, though more than in a normal theater. Perhaps with more people more sounds become undistinguishable. With fewer seats, these sounds might stand out more? Who knows. Turn up the volume, please.

So all-in-all I enjoyed the movie, but found that I would probably still like to join the ranks of the common folk again and watch a movie amongst noise, high volumes and regular non-alcoholic beverages. Besides, I’ll save a good amount of money doing that, so I can fund my popcorn and candy purchases.