Double Feature Sunday

I reverted a few years yesterday. Faced with the choice of picking between two equally somewhat-appealing summer flicks for my weekly movie review, I chose to avoid choice and take in both. I looked up the times, found that KUNG-FU PANDA ended 4 minutes after YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, and decided to see 2 for the price of 1.
Back in “the day,” this was an easier task to pull off. City cineplexes often offered multiple screenings of multiple movies ending at various times appropriate for marathon viewings (as opposed to the small town theater of my childhood, which had exactly two theaters, two films, two show times and one ever-vigilant guard keeping an eye on the “troublesome youths” with fear they would break into either a popcorn fight or an orgy at any given second). Going to the Lowes Boston Commons on a rainy Saturday afternoon used to be like paying a flat $8 fee for an All You Can Watch Buffet.
Then the theaters smartened up, realized the “troublesome youth” were cheating them out of easy money, and started coordinating movie times appropriately. Within a week, the games were over, the prices were jacked and Mel Gibson gained that much more financial support for his quest to own 99% of Malibu.
For whatever reason, the good cinema people in Culver City forgot to space their movies appropriately yesterday and I escaped back to the grand years of movie dorkdom. Sort of. After PANDA ended, I had to actually force myself into the theater next door to sit through two hours of ZOHAN, mostly because it was “free,” and less because I wanted to see it at that particular moment. By the time my four hours at the theater were up I was drained. Is this because I’m getting older? Or is it because the movies were kind of…boring?
I think it’s a little of both. An afternoon at the theater isn’t as appealing as it once was…or at least it wasn’t yesterday. PANDA was good, but not THAT good. And ZOHAN felt like a 2 hour sitcom I didn’t really care about. Neither film was bad. But neither managed to get my heart racing. All in all, it was a very blasé day at the theater.
But at least I saved 8 bucks.