When a friend suggested this week that we go to the cinema, I thought: “No, please let’s not. Can’t we wait for the DVD? And while we wait for the DVD, we can instead spend our time doing different leisurely pursuits, such as watching paint dry, learning Cantonese and tombstoning.” Because, you know, all of these in my mind are preferable to going to the cinema.  It was Little Orphan Annie who led me to believe that a trip to the flicks would be a thing of extreme glamour. But when my mum took me to see my first film – ET – we didn’t tap dance around the house beforehand. And, when we arrived at the Hammersmith Odeon, there were no ushers in tails to greet us with a little rendition of: “Let’s go to the movies, let’s go see the staaaars.” There was no orchestra, no dancing girls – just a film that my mother had to carry me out of in tears.  It was Ivor Novello who described a visit to the cinema as “a little outing in itself. It breaks the monotony of an afternoon or evening; it gives a change from the surroundings of home, however pleasant.” He was right. Going to the cinema is a break from the pleasant surroundings of home, one where the comfort of your sofa and a nice meal is replaced with the smell of hot dogs that have been turning on a grill for several hours, and a seat covered in stale popcorn and chewing gum (the gum you only learn about once you have left the cinema and your friends point out a nasty sticky substance all over the back of your jeans).  And, yes, going to the cinema does break the monotony of an afternoon or an evening, replacing it with a different one – 20 minutes of car adverts. Always car adverts, broken up with the odd booze advert. “But,” some say, “you miss the full magic of a film when you don’t see it on the big screen.” If, by magic, they mean “feral youths talking on their smartphones”, or “watching Final Destination 78 in 3D”, then I suppose they have a point.  I put this to my friend, who asked when, exactly, I had become such a misanthrope, before informing me that we wouldn’t be going to any old cinema – we would be going to a “picture house”. “Aha,” I said, “you’re not fooling me with your poncey terminology. A picture house is merely a cinema by another name.” But I was bored and desperate to see The Inbetweeners Movie, so I relented.  Initially, I could not find the picture house. It seemed to have been replaced by a café, with pretty young things sitting outside drinking red wine, pretending they were in Paris, not south London. But then I realised that this café was the picture house, and that you could take your red wine in to the cinema with you, along with nibbles such as olives – not a frankfurter in sight – and that the chairs were chewing gum-free and that some of them even had tables in front of them.  As I settled down to the The Inbetweeners, surrounded by other highbrow folk, I realised that this picture house was perfect. If you can’t bring the cinema to your living room, then bring your living room to the cinema. And, as the car adverts began to roll, I wondered what else they could to do to make the experience more homely.  Perhaps they could pause the film when a member of the audience decides they need to go to the loo, right at the film’s denouement. Just to make it really authentic, they could lift the “silence in the auditorium” rule, so that everybody can talk over the film at critical points, meaning that you have no idea what is going on.  And maybe they could employ some children, who could traipse down the aisles wailing “I CAN’T SLEEEEEP” at precisely the moment the leading man and lady’s clothes fall off and they start engaging in conjugal relations.  Hmm. Maybe going to the cinema isn’t so bad after all.
Just when you thought it was safe to give it the flick, the old movie theatre    reinvents itself.