Letter: Movie critic

How much longer will people go out to the movies? Considering the out-of-touch, money-grubbing policies of theater management, maybe not much longer.

We stand in painfully long lines due to the theater shrewdly skimping on ticket-booth personnel. Hand over your stubs, then the mother-of-all-lines — the food concession line — again, excruciatingly slow and understaffed. I always get behind someone buying for everybody else on the bus.

Finally I get a quart of colored sugar-water, a couple of boxes of candy and a barrel of stale popcorn, and requisite mystery oil, for merely 30 bucks — plus stratospheric ticket prices. Who are they trying to compete with, Busch Gardens?

Finally, head to your seat. What the? The movie’s been out for a week, and it’s being shown on a screen the size of a garage door. Are you kidding me? I paid the same for my ticket and soon-to-be-stomach-pump food as the people did at the sprawling big screen next door.

OK, try to make the best of it. The lights dim finally — TV commercials. Yep, that’s right. TV commercials. The only reason I left the house was to get away from them. Half an hour of these, then time to see the coming attractions for 2008.

Charge more for tickets and over-priced junk food, hire less staff, show avalanches of advertisements and wonder why more and more people stay at home with pay-per-view, big screens, surround sound and packed refrigerators.

Larry Meholick/Naples