Movies Used To Be Cheap Entertainment

I love going to the movies. I always have, the Drive-in, the theater, whatever. They are all good. Give me a big screen, padded seats and a great sound system and I am pretty happy. I almost never walked out on a movie. A bad movie is like a train wreck, it is hard to look away.

It used to be that the biggest challenge was trying to sneak in some food. I certainly didn’t want to pay through the nose for popcorn and candy, especially if I hit the bargain matinee. Those were usually somewhere between $3.50 and $5. What was the point of paying more for the food than the movie.

Back in college my girlfriend and I found a place that charged a buck a movie. For poor college students it was an outstanding find. We loved it and spent many happy hours there.

Alas I haven’t found anything close to that place in years. For a while the weekends provided the standard $5 fair, but that seems to have disappeared. More and more chains have raised their rates into the $7 to $12 range and shortened the time frame that they were available. Instead of having until six P.M. many theaters seem to offer the bargain for the first couple of shows only.

So what you have is a movie date that is just slightly less than it would be if you went to the standard evening show. Roughly this works out to be between $20-$25 for a pair of tickets and then another $10 in cheap snacks. Add dinner, parking and a couple of odds and ends and you have spent a couple of bucks.

I don’t mind spending money on entertainment but the cost of seeing a movie has made it more important to me to be certain that I want to see it. It is irritating to spend a chunk of change on a bad movie.

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