“Naw. Let’s watch something at home.”

If I had a buck for every time I’ve suggested a night at the movies to Karen, I’d be a wealthy man. I still love watching movies in the theaters, but these days we’re more likely to opt for staying home.

A sign of age? (Ugh…I hope not.) Post-Covid, I suspect there are lots of folks like us, in all age groups, and I’m beginning to wonder if date night at the movies will survive. It just ends up a disappointment.

First of all, we keep forgetting there’s no hurry. Nowadays, arriving on time guarantees that you’ll be subjected to the endurance test— 25 minutes or more of endless advertisements. I can remember when ads in theaters were strictly forbidden…and later, movie-goers would grumble after just one or two commercials, wondering what the world was coming to. Little did we know what lay ahead.

After all, we weren’t watching TV at home, where we’d be bombarded by ads. We paid good money to enter a theater and see a movie, not be subjected to an endless stream of crass commercialism. Geesh!

o escape the madness, I usually venture off to the snack bar, only to return $20-$30 poorer. Popcorn, soft drink, and M&Ms—plain, not peanut, lest I invoke the ire of my otherwise happy-go-lucky bride. Let’s see, I’m into this experience for around $50 bucks by now, and comments about the expansion of my tummy.

What are we doing here, I wonder, as I make my way back to Theater 6? I mean, we don’t know anything about this film we’re about to see, except it’s “Rotten Tomato” ratings. Thank God my kids are adults, long out on their own; otherwise we’d be out $100, the average cost for a family of four to go to the movies now.

If I time it right, I’m back in my seat just in time for the coming attractions, a priority for me. So, I wonder…what can we look forward to this blockbuster summer season? I remember when May and October previews led the march to big-budget, Hollywood star-studded offerings guaranteed to satisfy.

Well, here’s a partial listing of what’s currently playing at our local Regal multiplex:

“Deadpool & Wolverine”

“It Ends With Us”

“Twisters”

“Despicable Me 4”

“Trap”

“Harold and The Purple Canyon” …

Anyway, you get the idea. Slim pickings. Usually it’s just Karen and me and five others in the theater, including a couple of ladies two rows behind who won’t stop talking, and a gentleman next to me enjoying a smelly burrito. Hulu movies on my 65-inch TV, in the comfort of our living room, are sounding good right about now.

The condition of the men’s room urinals—none of them operational—spells trouble for our theater.

Then Nicole Kidman attempts once again to redeem the experience with a message that always resonates for me:

“We come to this place…for magic. We come to AMC theaters to laugh, to cry, to care. Because we need that, all of us, that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim. And we go somewhere we’ve never been before; not just entertained, but somehow reborn. Together. Dazzling images on a huge silver screen. Sound that I can feel. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. Our heroes feel like the best part of us, and stories feel perfect and powerful. Because here, they are.”

Yes, yes! This is what the silver screen means to me! But alas, its future seems uncertain.

Others have made the choice all too often to stay home and save the cash, and I get it! Some of the streaming content is quite entertaining. According to The Economist, Americans who went to the cinema more than five times in 2000 went fewer than three times in 2023. Even worse, “One out of every five moviegoers has vanished since the pandemic,” says The Hollywood Reporter.

Despite all these issues, I’m willing to look past Covid and the Hollywood strike that ground film production to a screaming halt and wait longer for a recovery. But not indefinitely. Blockbusters like “Top Gun Maverick” and the recent rom com “Fly Me to the Moon” give me hope.

Because Nicole is right. At the movies, I am somehow reborn, and the stories feel perfect and powerful.

Just give me more of them.