"The Kids are All Right" was more than Alright!

LOVED this movie! Go see it when you get a chance. If you haven't heard about it, it's the story of two women (Julianne Moore and Annette Benning) who are married (yes, to each other) and have 2 kids from the same sperm donor. One of the kids is now 18 so they decide to track down the bio dad, (Mark Ruffalo), and all hell breaks loose when domestic happiness becomes trouble in paradise. It's one of the best movies about marriage I've seen in a really long time. Funny and smart and real.

Now my movie-going experience, however, less than alright. First of all, it was a 9:30pm movie on a Tuesday night. It was a sold-out movie. I went with 2 friends and we got there about 9:20pm, but couldn't find 3 seats together. I politely asked if some folks would move over as there were 3 empty seats in one row, and this lady flat out refused and told us we should have come earlier if we wanted to sit together. It's not like the movie had already started or anything. And we weren't the only people walking around looking for seats. You'd THINK people in the theater would just move over once they realized it was a sold-out movie. Like nice normal people would do. But NOPE.

So the 3 of us sat separately, but tried to sit near each other. I ended up next to 2 guys who were the kind of guys you hate at movies -- they were yelling and talking back the whole time, like "Oh no she didn't" and "ew, gross" when the women kissed. Really, you didn't know it was a lesbian marriage movie?? But worse than that, they pulled out a TRAY of chicken wings to eat during the movie. A TRAY. Of Chicken Wings. With Ranch Dressing. For Dipping. And they licked and sucked their fingers after each one. And threw the bones on the floor. And it smelled to high heaven. AND he leaned into my seat. I sat so far to the corner of my seat that my back hurt. And I held my nose the entire movie.

Plus there were the people who brought their 4 year old and infant to this movie. The 4-year-old got to hear the repeated F-word and watch the gay porn and see the sex scenes and nudity. The infant eventually woke up and coughed (a croupy cough) for the last 20 minutes of the movie, and of course the parents didn't take him out of the theater.

When the movie was over, I went to find a manager to complain to. SHE was the worst of all. I told her about the guys with the wings and she wanted to know why I didn't complain DURING the movie. I explained, politely, that I had paid good money to see a movie and didn't want to miss even 10 minutes of it to have to come out and complain, that it's the theater's job to make sure people don't bring in things like chicken wings and disrupt the movie. She just kept telling me that unless I had complained DURING the movie there was nothing she could do about it. She told me it was illegal to search bags (and yet they do it at Broadway theaters and baseball stadiums, btw), and that they don't make it routine to help people find seats in sold-out shows, and that she can't do anything for me now, it's just too bad I didn't want to miss any of the movie to complain earlier, she would have made them throw away the wings. I said that wouldn't have helped b/c I would have been stuck sitting next to them the rest of the movie anyway and they would have been angry at me and she was like "Oh well." I said that I worked hard and just wanted to come enjoy a movie and it was the worst movie-going experience I'd had in a long time. She just repeated that I should have complained earlier. I told her I'd never be going back to that theater and she said "That's fine."

Okay, I'm done ranting. I'll be contacting the general manager of the theater, btw, to complain. :-)