Pissed at MCL JP Cinema

There's a thing about long lines that irks me: the irritating chatter of throngs of people hanging about waiting for their turn to come, the incessantly trival delays that people spend at the start of the line haggling to get the stuff that they want; and the actual waiting time when you're really in a hurry to catch something else.

All that and more I had to endure to get to a movie ticketing booth to try to get to watch a movie that's been showing for 2 weeks in Hong Kong already.

The movie was "Perhaps Love" (如果‧愛) , a chinese movie/musical starring Jacky Cheung, Zhou Xun, and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Reviews were pretty good, and the film is an upcoming candidate for the Oscars next year respresenting Hong Kong, besting The Myth and Everlasting Regret. Despite the fact that Takeshi Kaneshiro stars - his good looks are more well known than his acting skills.. and IMHO, he's fairly average as an actor - but a good indicator is usually involvement with Jacky Cheung. So far I've seen recently, he's picked a fairly good amount of well made movies. To give my readers some perspective, I was very much looking forward to this movie as much as King Kong and Harry Potter. I was expected to be THAT good, as a local chinese production.

The movie was scheduled at 3:50, and I was already in line at about 3:30. Unfortunately for me, loads of other blockbuster movies were about to be shown in the upcoming Christmas break this week, namely King Kong, Harry Potter, and Chicken Little. The first two alone would create lines as long as the Great Wall of China, if I had my say. And trust me, the lines were loooOOooong. I was irked to the bone when the time passed the 3:50 mark. Bad enough I missed it, but when I finally got into the ticket booth, the person informed me that there will be no more viewings for this particular movie starting tomorrow.

I got into a rage.

Its bad enough I lined up for the movie itself, but to find out that it would not be showing anymore (at my favorite cinema house, no less - they have really good layout, big screens and awesome sound system) and the fact that despite the long lines, they opened only 2 out of three booths.. and with a girl standing inside the ticketing booth doing nothing. I was so pissed I was already cramming to ask for the manager... I specifically applied for a membership in for this particular movie chain, because this one location in Causeway Bay, called JP Cinema, had extremely good layout for movie watching. And finally, as a patron, I was frustrated to find out how logistically incapable these people are. unfortunately, the peon of a person selling the tickets was too english incapable to understand my complaints to talk to the manager, and I left the ticket booth as a fuming, irritated and extremely dissatisfied customer.

I have almost no choice but to continue patronizing this movie chain, as they are the only ones so far that has had a spectacular layout for movie watching. But if I soon find a similar layout, I'm going to immediately switch movie chains.

I'm going to have to watch the movie in another chain then, despite that they're still showing Perhaps Love in their other location branches. I'm just too pissed to watch it at any MCL branch right now.