As some of you know, my mother and I are co-film critics at a local newspaper.
Normally, we review movies at a theater that is right near our house – we walk there – but they don’t show 3D, so we planned to see Up at the nearest theater that does, about 20 minutes away.
I called them in advance to get permission. The manager on the phone said, “No problem, just show your ID’s and we’ll give you your tickets.”
Unfortunately, the person working the box office on Friday night (who claimed to be a manager) wasn’t informed of this and refused to let us in, saying that Up in 3D was designated “No Passes” (the sign on our usual theater often says “No Passes” on movies we’ve been allowed in to review anyway). The head manager was off that night and there was no way to contact her.
We showed her a copy of our review in the paper with our byline and our I.D.s (she didn’t really look at them). She looked around the box office for a note from the manager I had spoken to, but couldn’t find one. We asked to speak to the other manager on duty - “he’ll just tell you the same thing I did,” she said.
Then I asked if she would comp us into the 2D Up. She said yes. So I offered to pay the $4 to upgrade to 3D. She said it didn’t work that way – it had to be the full $24 for two tickets. At that point, I would have just paid, but we are struggling writers and we can’t afford to spend that much on a movie.
Finally, we accepted the tickets for the 2D Up, which was playing in another theater in the multiplex.
But this was Pixar’s first film in 3D, and possibly my only chance to see it that way (not to mention that I wanted to write about the 3D effects in our review). Now we were in the lobby, and it was playing in the theater right over there, right then and we really did have permission to go see it! (If this was, for example, Land of the Lost in 3D, I probably would have said, “eh, forget about it.”) We tried to explain our situation to the guy handing out 3D glasses. I don’t know if he understood what we were saying or not.
We went and bought one popcorn, (which was slightly more than what I would have paid to upgrade the 2D comp tickets to 3D) and went back to the glasses guy.
“The glasses are for the 3D one,” he explained.
”Oh, that’s the one we’re going to,” I said.
And he handed us the glasses, simple as that. We’re still not sure if he realized what we were doing or not.
Again, I would have felt terribly guilty, if I didn’t actually have permission to review the film.
We got into the theater, found a seat, and put our glasses on early, as a “disguise”. We got to see the entire movie without incident, and left the multiplex out the doors that were furthest from the box office, feeling just a little bit of naughty glee.
Our review comes out tomorrow. I’ll post it up then on the review thread. Needless to say, we loved it! 