At some point in our lives, most of us have probably found ourselves sitting in a theater watching a film that wasn’t what we expected. (Though, admittedly, this should never happen to Plugged In’s savvy readers, right?) But a story out of England yesterday takes this common experience in a pretty comical direction.
The Artist is making some serious noise this awards season. It recently won three Golden Globes (including Best Musical/Comedy), has been nominated for a whopping 12 BAFTAs (the awards handed out by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and is likely to be on the short list of Best Picture frontrunners when Oscar nominations are announced next week.
Despite all that critical attention, however, it seems a handful moviegoers in Liverpool, England, didn’t get the memo when it came to one fairly important feature of the film: It’s silent. As in, no talking. As in, the kind of movie you might have seen if you were headed to the cinema in, say, 1920, not 2012.
A few of these patrons were so annoyed by The Artist’s lack of dialogue, in fact, that at least one British movie chain has admitted to giving some of them their money back. “Odeon Liverpool One can confirm it has issued a small number of refunds to guests who were unaware that The Artist was a silent film,” Britain’s Telegraph reported yesterday.
For his part, French director Michel Hazanavicius was amused by the news. “I have been told about it, and I think it’s hilarious, actually,” he said. But he also supported the right of any moviegoer to ask for a refund if they didn’t like what they saw. “If I could give any advice to people it would be that they should ask for their money back whenever they see a film they don’t expect. If it’s not written on the poster ‘this is a bad movie’ and they think it’s a bad movie, ask for a refund!”
I appreciated what Washington Post pop culture blogger Jen Chaney had to say about the story’s takeaway lesson for all of us.
Although the Telegraph's ridiculous story generates mostly giggles, not to mention more buzz for a film that will likely be nominated for several Academy Awards when nominations are announced on Tuesday, it does raise a somewhat more serious matter: the importance of being an educated moviegoer. Although some people refrain from reading reviews out of fear of spoiling a movie's surprises, it's important to at least have some sense of what you're in for when you plunk down money to buy a ticket. … Obviously, it's hard to know exactly what you're going to get from every multiplex experience. Frankly, that's part of the joy. But in an age where plot summaries can be accessed with a few swipes of a smartphone and information about the quality of a film can easily be found on sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, there is no excuse to claim total cluelessness.
Indeed, there is no excuse for “total cluelessness” when it comes to movies’ content in 2012. And one of our goals and desires at Plugged In is to ensure that you have all the “clues” you need to make wise decisions for yourself and your family when it comes to today’s burgeoning entertainment smorgasbord—not just with movies, but with your television, music and video game choices as well.
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