We went to see Harry Potter on Saturday. Actually convinced my wife’s cousin to babysit for us for a few hours, giving us our third night out alone in the last 18 months. With about 45 minutes left in the movie, these three kids pop up and ask us to move over a seat. We did, not wanting to cause a scene. 5 minutes later, one of the girls gets on her cel. Then stands up, kneels in front of the other chick and guy and gets the other girl on her cel. Then they’re talking back and forth about God knows what. At this point, I lean over and quietly ask them to turn the cels off and, y’know, sit and watch the move we moved over for them to see. She tells us it’s an emergency, so The Wife suggests they take it outside. Both girls start bitching about this suggestion, The Wife gets up to get a manager, and the girls ratchet their complaining up even louder while the guy tries to calm them down. At this point, The Wife’s halfway out of the theater and as I get up to follow (I was too angry to focus on the movie at this point), people all around our seats are starting to yell at these girls, who get louder and louder as they yell back at the entire theater.

Eventually, The Wife is able to get a manager involved, but we’ve lost 15 minutes of the movie at this point, and neither one of us wants to go back in. We get a refund and they shove a pair of free passes into my hands. As we’re leaving the building, the three kids, who couldn’t have been older than 16, are being brought to the front area by the manager. Instead of walking them straight out, he was taking them to the customer service desk, so I’m not sure what was happening, but the guy looked defeated and the girls couldn’t have cared less, laughing and talking to each other. I shuffled The Wife out the door immediately, before she could go back and really go off on them, figuring it was better for me to simmer on the way home than to bail the little lady out of jail for assault.

Movie studios and theaters wonder why the fuck people might rather download a new release than go to the theater to see it on the big screen? Here’s your answer. In the last 5 years, we’ve had incidents like this happen at easily 80% of the movies we’ve gone to see. Normally shushing the perpetrators is enough to deal with the issue, be we’ve ended up actively walking out and leaving the theater 4 different times. I asked the manager the other night why they don’t have ushers who actively patrol the theaters, and his response was that they do (!) and that they obviously didn’t do a good job this time. When I informed him that the last 4 movies we’ve seen in his theater – Edwards Alhambra Renaissance Stadium 14 – have all been marred by people talking, texting or otherwise being annoying to those around them with no sign of a theater employee doing anything, EVEN WHEN THEY’VE BEEN VISIBLY IN THE THEATER DURING THE DISTURBANCE, he had no response.

I’m not saying I’m going to head downtown to buy a copy of Harry Potter: The Order Of The Phoenix on DVD for $5…but I’d be lying if I claimed that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I really enjoyed the first chunk of the flick, after all, and I’d love for The Wife to see what comes next – I hear something important happens.

Spread the word!