The first matinee of M. Night Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water" hasn't started yet and three teenage boys wait in chairs at the back of the theater, talking.

Like most of the people who come to the Marco Movie Theatre, they're tourists. The three and their families — who are scattered across the four-screen theater — have made a weekend pilgrimage to the island from Boynton Beach, Fla., for six years.

They go to the beach during the long weekend, they say. They parasail, jet ski and ... well, they attend the laaadeees.

And somewhere in the busy schedule, the families always make it to the 272-seat theater.

"I like the idea that you can eat here," says Frank Ferraro, 17, "and get a nice lunch."

They all nod.

The 16-year-old theater is a hybrid of the cinema drafthouse, one of not many in the country that shows new releases like "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" in intimate theaters and serve the kind of fare — wine and beer included — any TGI Friday's would be proud to offer.

It's like seeing brand new movies in your living room, says Zach Placido, also 17. "It's kind of comforting."

My neck hurts.

So I take off my glasses. I put them back on. I crane my head back. I twist in my seat to look at the screen at an angle.

Then I cede my seat, the second off the aisle in row three of four, moving to the seat against the wall.

Now I have the visual space to watch a movie screen that's not much more than 20 feet away.

Better.

Two of the Marco auditoriums are nearly traditional with rows of seats taking up the majority of the small room. Each has a triangular table that can be retrieved from the arm rest. In the back though, there's one cafe table with four chairs. A short counter runs across the two wings of the back. It seats 65. The other theaters seat 80, 76 and 55.

The others have less row seating, more tables, long counters and cafe-height tables that sprout from the wall. All have well-padded swivel chairs.

Only eight people are watching Shyamalan's latest feature, a largely panned fairytale of faith and vulnerability.

Popcorn bags rustle in the back. Still, the room has a fragrance with more culinary gravitas — something bready warm, something meaty and something fried.

The waitress has already taken my order. In the dark. Of the prologue.

It's a gray darkness that allows for navigating food to mouth, but not quite bright enough to see a menu. She shines the blue glow of her PDA on the menu as I looked for something to eat.

"We've got a little bit of everything," she says.

There's a char-grilled 1/2 pound hamburger for $8.95 (net carbs 5.2, the menus says). Add American, Swiss or blue cheese for .95 cents.

There's a Philly cheese steak ($10.95), a meatball grinder ($10.95), a Thai chicken salad ($10.95), a sirloin steak "smothered with a chopped spinach, feta and tomato coating" ($11.95), eight kinds of pizza, chicken fingers ($7.50), three kinds of quesadillas and four wraps.

The Marco theater also offers cappuccino, Heineken, a Beringer Merlot and a variety of bottled spring waters and teas.

I pick a movie theater classic with what I hope to be a restaurant treatment: Nachos Supreme with chili, cheese, sour cream, guacamole, black olives, pico de gallo as well as salsa and jalepenos for $9.95. And bottled water ($3.50).

She taps the little screen and the order makes its way through the ethers to the long narrow kitchen behind ticket and popcorn counter.

Quirino Garcia, 32, is one of two cooks — one for matinees and one for evenings. "We make lots of food," says Garcia, a man apparently sized for his kitchen. "Especially Fridays and weekends."

"I have no idea," he says of how items many he makes during a typical shift. "Say, like today, maybe 50. I don't know. I have no idea. But some days I cook a lot."

A respectable 14 minutes after ordering, a skillet of chips and shiny substances I can't make out appear. It tastes good, thick and business with flavors — considerably better than the cardboard and melted crayon versions most theaters sell.

In the early days, Nick Campo and co-owner Bud Hoffman would wait outside the theater, listening to patrons as they walked away.

"People wouldn't be talking about the movie," he says, laughing. "They'd be talking about the theater."

The Marco Movie Theater was not the first movie house eatery. In fact, a low-test version has been around for decades, serving up dollar movies and classic films along with bar food, wine and beer.

But only a handful, including a groundbreaker called the Commodore in Portsmouth, Va., had made the leap to first-run films and in-auditorium service by 1990, when Campo and four partners shoe-horned the 6,800-square-foot Marco theater into four empty storefronts. It was — and still is — the only theater on the island.

"We were in the right place at the right time," says Campo, who is perched on a chair in the auditorium that's showing "Monster House."

Campo, a Chicago transplant, was a restaurant man with no experience in movie exhibition when he started running the theater, which splits revenue evenly between food and tickets and sells 55 percent of its tickets day in, day out, in season and out. Quite a feat in industry that's seen sliding attendance for the last three years.

The format likely contributes to their success, but the nuts-and-bolt reality is that there's not much competition on Marco Island, especially for families and especially at night.

"If you want to go to a great restaurant in Marco, that's no problem. You can do it every night of the week," he says. "But with five or six kids? We're the only game in town."

He laughs again: "And a theater that only seats 76 people? It doesn't take very long to sell half or more. Do the math."

In the beginning, they weren't first run. They got films a week or so late, after the big chains wanted a change-up in their multiplex selection. The Marco theater made the profitable jump when Paramount offered the theater "The Flintstones" right out of the box.

"We didn't know you could do that."

In fact, as of this year, only 270 theaters in the country have made the first-run and alcohol mix work, according to In Focus, a publication of the National Association of Theater Owners.

"Disney was the hardest," Campo says of making the switch with distributors. "Because of the wine and beer. There are still theaters that can't get Disney films because of the way they serve it, at the front counter."

In 1999, they opened the Beach Theater in Fort Myers. By then, they'd sussed out the dilemma of successfully running two separate concerns — a restaurant and a theater — under the same roof. They built the four-screen theater from the ground up, adding square footage but no more seats.

The group has looked at the Pavilion in Naples, but "couldn't make the number work."

Today he gets e-mails from patrons preparing to come down for a vacation (like most movie theaters, their busiest time is summer). They want to know what's coming so they don't see it back home. And they have one other message.

"People say, 'Thank you, you've ruined us for other movie theaters.' "

The matinees over, more than 200 people flip-flop their way to the exit. Some to their hotel rooms at the Hilton Hotel directly across the street.

About 20 queue up, waiting while the staff cleans out the auditoriums.

Sue Fazio, 46, hasn't been to this theater. It's their first visit to Marco for the Boca Raton family of four. But she's been to a red-carpet version at home, though.

There, a megaplex called Palace 20 offers six balcony auditoriums, a theater chef, a supervised playroom and reserved seating — with $18 tickets that guarantee valet parking, unlimited popcorn and a private entrance.

It's a gamble of luxury and repackaged convenience that some smaller chains — the Palace is one of 13 in Muvico Theater's mostly Florida theater chain — have made to draw the jaded movie-goer. With thousands of screens and hundreds of theaters, the large chains have resisted making the costly change, especially with five-figure digital projection upgrades on the horizon.

"I love the idea," Fazio says of the local theater. In Boca Raton, her 14-year-old daughter can't go into parts of the theater-restaurant. And when someone told Fazio about the Marco theater, they trundled over. "We wanted to see a movie and need to eat. Therefore ..."

The line starts moving.

"M. Sham Ah Lie An," one patron drops knowingly to his companion. "Believe me, I know exactly what it is going to be like. I have seen the previews."

Tim Shannon watches the line trickle forward as he listen to the phone. "If you wanna get a good seat, you can get tickets in advance," he says, glancing at the older woman fidgeting at the register. "Or just come before the movie starts."

"Normally, it's out the door," says Shannon, 20. He means since he started two weeks ago. "Most Fridays the lines are around Rookies," a restaurant in their little strip.

He sells tickets and makes popcorn, usually five or six batches for each showing.

He likes the job. The people. The patrons are usually nice, too. Although sometimes they complain about not being able to sit together or just the odd arrangment of the theaters.

His answer? Apologize and give them their money back.

The food runners fly by the counter as he talks. The boys reach into the popcorn machine, catching fluffy new buds as they fall from the metal chandelier.

"Look at this," a Max Headroom of a man with three young girls exclaims as he walks into the 80-seat theater showing "Pirates." "And you can order beer."

They settle at a counter on the right side of the theater. They don't like it. They explore the tables (all full) and then the two rows of seats near the screen.

Nope.

"It's too close," he says, gathering the girls and returning to the spot at the top of the theater.

Across the hall in "Monster House," the previews have started. It's half-filled with kids and parents. Some are spread out across the counters and tables with candy or popcorn in neat piles and blankets in little drifts.

The Amblin Entertainment trademark appears on the screen: The silhouette of Elliot and E.T. flying a bike across the moon.

A chorus of "E.T." rises across the little room, like frog calls during a summer rain.

The servers begin taking orders on their little pads. A receipt machine swings on their belt as they move.

Moviegoers are pretty much a macrocosm of the tipping population, says Corinne Pahr, a 26-year-old civil engineer who works at the theater for the money that "goes for fun."

"Some people complain about the 15 percent that's added," she says, of the automatic gratuity. "Others say, no, no, you keep it. But there's already a gratuity added. No," they say, "keep it all."

On the screen, the evil animated house eats someone unsavory and a small voice at the center of the theater notes wryly: "Now that was scary."

There are no tears, though. No one is rushed into the comfort of the hallway. And when it's all over, everyone seems happy.

"We love it," says Trudy Brown, 41. Her daughter Trinity, 4, moves ahead of her to join her dad, Doug, 48. They're all down from Kentucky. "And the food was good. We debated whether to eat before we came or not. It worked out fine."

The theater was perfect for her daughter. "There was lounging room, you know?"

She smiles. "We wish we had one at home."