Shane Hegarty's encylopaedia of modern life
In an era of full employment, there is a curiously large number of people sitting in our cinemas each morning. The ESRI should really factor that into its annual statistics. Then again, the Irish are the top moviegoers in Europe. We see even more films a year than the French, who not only invented cinema but also claimed the blue movie while they were in the patent office. Today, the cinemas are expanding to accommodate our appetite, planting miles and miles of screens along the dual-carriageways of the land. Perhaps our movie-going rate is increasing not because people are flocking to the cinema, but because they just happened to be sitting in a particular spot when a cinema swallowed them up.
They used to be given evocative names such as the Roxy or the Kino, but now carry either bland acronyms (UCI, UGC, IFI) or simply boast about their size (Bray Cineplex, Santry Omniplex, Blanchardstown Tyrannosaurus Plex). Because size is what it's all about now. Or rather, over-size. The popcorn might come in 'kid' portions, but that only means that you could fit a child into the carton. The giant portion requires two people to carry it and contains more salt than the Dead Sea. The soft drinks contain more water than the Dead Sea, coming as they do in three standard sizes: regular, large and lake. Accidentally knock one over as you take your seat, and it'll drown the people in the front row.
It doesn't matter that it costs more to eat at the cinema than it does at Restaurant Patrick Gilbaud; that you could buy a small sweet shop for the price of a large bag of M&Ms. When you go to the cinema, there is a strange compulsion to have these things.
You would never consider eating nachos in any other context, but War of the Worlds just wouldn't be the same without them. And the thing is, you'll have everything eaten and gulped down before the trailers have finished because the pre-amble goes on for longer than the movie itself. Several hours are taken up with public service announcements: Turn off your mobile phone. Do not smoke. Do not speak. Do not ask "what did she just say?". Do not yell "that's ridiculous!" at pivotal plot moments.
Then some time is spent bragging about the extraordinary sound, which is swooshed around the auditorium to give you a preview of the migraine you'll be leaving the cinema with. When the movie finally begins on the four-storey screen, if you're sitting within 15 seats of the front row you'll need to dislocate your neck to see what's happening. Not that you it matters, because with two gallons of Coke pressing on your bladder, you're up and down more often than Colin Farrell's accent.