I went to the movies this weekend, which everyone in the world but us calls “the cinema”. I saw Bohemian Rhapsody.
First, Mr Robot did an excellent job of capturing Freddie, or at least stepping out of one bizarro persona into another.
Next, the visit to the theater was a stereotypical exercise in exactly-the-same-only-different. The multi-plex is located at the very fine mall near my apartment , however the only entrance into the theater is from inside the mall proper. And, the entrance is not marked to the hysterical level I would expect, so as I glanced at it initially I thought it was just a mall information desk...
Next, there is no “festival seating”, every seat is reserved. At the ticket desk a screen pops up in front of you showing available seats. I hit the screen three times before I understood it was not a touchscreen and I was supposed to communicate my choice to the sales person using my vocal cords!!! Heavens! But hey, what a bahgain — 6pm on Saturday and the movie is approximately $6!!!!
Then I took my ticket and went upstairs where I had to go through the bottleneck of a single person checking tickets.
Once inside I find the theater spotless, with huge wide comfy seats, and enough legroom in front that an American or a German could scooch by to his seat without my inspecting his taste in jeans.
The decibel level was not so prohibitively loud that I was cringing in my seat — although I was at a rock music show, and not an action show with car crashes and bombs exploding...
No one talked. No phones rang. There were no screens lighting up with texting. No babies cried. I was the only one singing along… Not really, but… yeah, ok, I was singing along.
So all-in-all, on the exactly-the-same-only-different scale, I’d have to give the Polish movie experience a higher score than the US.
One moment when I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore was during a scene where Freddie was kissing a paramour, and it wasn’t enough that the guy next to me covered his own eyes.... but his date actually reached over and covered his eyes with her hand as well... on second thought, maybe I am in Kansas.