Of all the movie theatres in the Richmond metro area (and yes, I did deliberately decide to spell theatre the pompous fancy-shmancy lah-de-dah way in the interest of increasing my hits on all those high-falutin’ search engines the rich folk are using nowadays), my favorite by far is the Commonwealth 20.  Now some of you may say that the Byrd is far superior if one is looking to catch a midnight showing of Goonies for less than $2, and that argument is a sound one, so far as it goes.  However, the Commonwealth 20 has something far more awesome to offer than even an extremely late and economically priced showing of Sean Astin while before he became a hobbit.  What is that, you ask?  Allow me to answer your question with another question, which is really less of a question than a rambling soliloquy about what is probably the least thought about thing related to movie theatres ever, the computer-generated “Go Buy Some Snacks Dammit!” thing.  You know, like after you’ve already sat through three repeats of Coke-sponsored trivia questions about Barbara Streisand and Snoop Dog, and after the Jeep commercials (which always make me sad, cause I always hope that this time it means they’ve finally gotten around to making Jeep: The Motion Picture, but no, they haven’t) (yet), and after the 72 different trailers for movies that are coming out soon, 57 of which star Keanu Reeves as the chosen one fighting something like zombies, robots, or childhood obesity.  Then, right before the actually movie starts, there’s the snack thing.

            Now, most of these are so sucky and lame that you might be forgiven for thinking that there’s some Federal law requiring it (there’s not though, I checked with the Federal Bureau of Things That Have to Suck, and even though it ought to be right there between vacuum cleaners and Ben Affleck, there’s nothing on the books about the snack dealie).  And of course, every theatre company has their own version of this thing, most of which look like they were done in 1958 by transferring the fevered dreams of a beatnik directly to film.

            Like, at Regal Cinemas, they have that one where you get into this incredibly lame-looking Amtrak of the future from Tron, and it drives through this horrible war zone of snackage, with all the popcorn kernels detonating right as you drive by and stuff before it finally safely arrives right back where it started.  Or at United Artists, where they drive this unspeakably fake looking hovercar through some bizarre, Orwellian urban wasteland, where all these giant monuments have been built to honor chilled beverages and Milk Duds.  At one point, you buzz the gigantic popcorn tower, and all the popcorn falls out of it, probably crushing countless citizens on the street below, thus freeing them from a nightmarish life of perpetual torture and marketing in Snacktopia.  I forget exactly what the one at Carmike is about, but I’m pretty sure I had a dream once where Lee Iacocca punched a Diet Pepsi off of a flaming blimp, so we’ll just pretend that it was poorly animated and assume that’s their snack thing.  So, after all these, a person is hardly filled with hope and optimism that any CGI snack promotion thing could be other than blasphemously opposed to all that is good and decent in the world, but such a person would regret their harsh and hypothetical judgment when they finally went to the Commonwealth 20.  What makes it so awesome?  I’m not sure I can do justice to it here in mere words, but I’m just gonna start at the beginning and go from there as my muse leads me (yes, there is a blog muse, and she just so happens to be Margaret Thatcher).

            Okay, (and mind you here, I’m just going by memory) it all starts in this big stadium, and immediately, you realize that if ever a team of monkeys threw together an awesome piece of CGI animation, this is it.  All these snack foods start coming out of the various locker rooms and training facilities, and processing out onto the field.  They’re all there, M&Ms, Skittles, quality Coke Products, walking, nay, marching out there into the light of a sunny Spring afternoon.  Some of them are even dancing and doing backflips and stuff.  It’s completely awe-inspiring.  Then, right out of nowhere, the jumbo-sized popcorn tubs come out of nowhere, with a mighty thumpage that shakes the very foundations of the Earth itself (I know, this is fast becoming the dorkiest thing I’ve ever written, but it’s already too late to turn back).  Then, you get to see who’s sitting in the stands, and it’s even more snack foods, though they’re mostly all the ones that come in a bag, rather than popcorn and beverages, and they’re all dancing too; well, if you can call anything that a seated bag of mini-Snickers can do “dancing” (but then again, you can’t really call anything I can do “dancing” either, and I’ve actually got legs, so I don’t even have a good excuse or anything).  Finally, the camera pulls back far enoguht hat you can get a good look at the stadium, and it suddenly strikes you that it’s not just a stadium, it’s the Roman Colosseum, and you’re all like, “Zounds!  They’re going to fight to the death!  Oh, the humanity!”  And then the whole thing spins around a lot and becomes the Commonwealth 20 logo. 

I’m sure that it’s all actually an incredibly deep bit of symbolism, or possibly a biting commentary on our modern way of life, but for the life of me, I have no idea why.  What I do know however, is that if you’ve ever wanted to know what drugs are like without actually trying them, watching this thing is the closest you will ever get.  Really, it’s absolutely awesome, especially the part where when I’m there with Matt (to lean more about Matt, check out his bibliography on this very site) and when this thing comes one we both start giggling like schoolgirls as everyone else in the theatre gets totally weirded out.  Seriously though, even if there aren’t any good movies playing, it’s worth the price of admission just to see it.