Movies that do the decent thing

Last Saturday at the local cinema in Laguna Beach, we went to see the opening of "The Incredibles." Other than state the obvious that it was, indeed, incredible, I won't bother to add to the 386,457 reviews of this film.

I did note one thing that struck me. The film is on many levels state-of-the-art, and the sound track does no less. The sound track is so dense and so fully-packed that it frankly overwhelmed the equipment of this little local theater. The staff either didn't know how to balance the speakers or the speakers themselves couldn't cope with the sound track. Either way, a lot of the track was incomprehensible during the last 40 minutes of the film.

But this theater is a decent, local business. It lost no time in having a staff member stand out in front at the end of the film, and offer free passes or money back to anyone who felt they hadn't been satisfied by the film's outcome. There were a lot of takers. It was the decent thing to do.

Which made me think: If you make a film that promises a satisfying outcome to millions and millions of people, and if you make millions upon millions of dollars with this promise, and if that film, in the end, doesn't deliver a satisfying outcome to the millions who bought tickets, shouldn't you offer to give them their money back?

Wouldn't that be the least, the very least, decent thing to do?

Posted by Vanderleun at November 10, 2004 12:27 PM