Marshall and the Movies

My moviegoing pet peeve is crying babies.  Most people know by now that talking on your cell phone during a movie is like urinating in your front lawn – that is, something that you just know not to do.  With the dawn of the iPhone and other touch screen cell phones, the annoying clicking of texters has been significantly minimized.  And I talk a lot during movies, so for me to say that is my pet peeve would be extremely hypocritical.

But whenever some couple brings their infant to the movie with them because they were too lazy to get a babysitter, I want to go punch a wall.  The majority of the time, they start whining and crying.  Unfortunately, most parents are too busy serving their selfish desire to watch a movie to take their disruptive child into the lobby, thus ruining the movie for the rest of the audience who has paid good money to see the movie.

I do have a specific worst crying baby moment.  I was at “Funny People,” and I was jammed next to a woman and her baby.  I knew that it would be bad news before the movie started when her daughter wouldn’t stop whining during the pre-show entertainment.  She managed to keep it together for the beginning of the movie, but I knew she was a ticking time bomb.  During a poignant and emotional scene between Adam Sandler and Leslie Mann, the baby starts screaming at a level so loud that it blocked out the sound from the movie.  And if the audience was staring bullets at her mother, she must have been wearing a Kevlar body suit.  She let her daughter scream and cry for over 2 minutes before taking her out, just in time to ruin the scene for the entire theater.