My husband and I were talking recently about the first movies that we remember seeing in the theatre when we were kids. My husband remembers watching Bambie with his mom and his sister and loving the whole experience. I remember being in the car and thinking to myself: "Boy, I hope we go to the movies and we watch Cinderella." Probably, early in the day my mom had told me that we were going to the movies and I had most likely mentioned that I wanted to watch Cinderella. What I remember from this whole experience was the excitement of going to the movies with my mom and having the movie actually being Cinderella. For a long time afterwards, I believed that movie theatres somehow read your mind and only showed the movies that you wanted to see. If only this were actually true.
This discussion took place because we were debating what movie to take our son to for his "first theatre experience." Our memories are vivid enough that we wanted to make sure that our son was equally awed by the experience. his discussion also led us to a growing sense of frustration of the sheer lack of movie theatre offerings in Prince George.
Every single time that my husband and I have tried to go to the movies in Prince George since we've moved back to town, the movie that we've wanted to see is sold out, was not offered at all or we were a week late and the movie already left. We have since stopped trying to see movies in the theatre. As of press time, Prince George is offering eight movies, Kamloops has 12 movies you could watch and Victoria has 33 scattered throughout its theatres in the district. The two best theatres in Victoria, I think, are the Roxy and Cinecenta. The Roxy plays blockbuster movies (way, way way after their release date) and offers two movies for $5 and on Tuesdays, it's half price. The trade-off is the massively uncomfortable (and broken) chairs and the overpriced concession food items. Cinecenta is a movie theatre in the Student Union Building at UVic that also offers non-blockbuster shows at a discounted price and you can find exceptionally strange art-house flicks and foreign films. We need something like this in our town.
A common complaint I hear from the city's youth and newcomers to the city is that there is "nothing to do" in Prince George. few more movie theatres, even rusty, old broken-down theatres, would do the city some good.
