Only SIXTEEN CENTS!!

reviewed Thurs, 05 Dec 1996

I just saw a movie, complete with popcorn and a soda, for less than 50 cents.  Yes, you heard me, less than half a dollar.  A new 16-screen (yikes!) multiplex just opened a block from the office where I'm temping, and today and tomorrow they're showing 16 second-run movies for 16 cents, with 16-cent popcorn and sodas.  Of course, I'd seen all but 3 of the movies they were showing, but I would have gone anyway, just to enjoy a theater before the seats get broken and the floor gets all sticky.  Heck, I'd have paid 50 cents just to sit in a warm, dry place for two hours, and on top of that I get lunch and a movie!

So I went to see Multiplicity, one of the three I hadn't seen (the others being She's the One and The Nutty Professor).  Frankly, I'm glad I didn't pay more than 16 cents for it.  It's a really stupid movie.  Although there are a couple of laughs in it, nothing in it made me laugh as hard as I did last night when Michael Keaton was on David Letterman telling a story, which he swore was true, about how he got to meet the Pope because someone at the Vatican saw (I swear I'm not making this up) Johnny Dangerously and LIKED IT!!!  Plus I kept thinking of Mr. Cranky's comment that if they could clone Michael Keaton, they might try to clone Andie MacDowell, which frightened me as much as it frightened Mr. Cranky.

And I couldn't help thinking that under the lowest-common-denominator (i.e., the other people in the audience, who laughed uproariously), slapstick humor was the disturbing story of a hostile man on the verge of going postal who frequently threatens his wife and co-workers with violence.  He can't reconcile his nurturing side, his business side, and his fun side, so he must create physical representations of them to deal with his emotions.  Sort of like Falling Down meets Regarding  Henry.

The other people at the theater were more entertaining than the movie.  Behind me in line were three teenagers arguing over which movie to see and interspersing their opinions with, "Only sixteen cents, dude!  Sixteen cents!"  My favorite comment from them was: "How about Apollo 13?"  "Nah, I can't sit through that shit."

In the theater were even more laughs.  One woman started applauding for no discernible reason in the middle of the movie and kept up her clapping for a solid 30 seconds.  A man across the aisle from me kept saying in amazement, every time a new Michael Keaton clone appeared, "ANOTHER one?"

I nearly went right back in to see The Nutty Professor, but outside the rain had stopped and the sun was out, and the way the weather's been lately, you just can't pass up a chance like that, so I left.  But I'm going back tomorrow!

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