Over the weekend I went to see “TV Set” at the Sundance Cinemas here in town for a birthday treat. Sundance opened 2 weekends ago now, and I have been very excited for quite awhile for the new indie theater here in Madison. So it seemed only natural to pick a movie and give the theater a shot.
First off, lemme say the choice of the movie was fairly random. We looked through descriptions, saw trailors made the best of what was there. The treat was to go to Sundance, we weren’t going for any particular movie. I think I had seen trailors for TV Set previously and thought it looked interesting so that is where we went. It also looked like it was somewhat funny which we have been in the mood for somewhat recently. The other movies the Sundance offered seemed largely foreign. In a lot of different languages including Russian and German which I found quite interesting. (Usually you either have Asian or French). There were only 2 or 3 movies in English which really isn’t a big deal but sometimes you just don’t feel like reading.
We initially were going to order our seats online. One of the features of the Sundance is that you can order particular seats ahead of time, so if you want to be in the center back, you can go an order the exact seats. But after looking and seeing that no seats were taken, and that there was a $2 charge for ordering seats, we decided to just skip it and go to the theater instead. When we got there, we found out that we had to reserve particular seats and that there was a $2 surcharge per ticket even if you were getting your tickets AT the theater. We found this completely rediculous and have no idea why there is an additional surcharge, especially in the theater. The tickets already cost more than the average cinema that shows mainstream tickets, a fee we were willing to pay to avoid the commercials before the movie, but another $2? For what? I still can’t figure out what we were paying for. This added fee essentially makes the theater unrealistic to go to for non-matinee times, as the price for matinee is now more expensive than the price for a non-matinee at a mainstream theater. It is rediculous.
While the idea of reserving your seats I think is good for some movies, when the theater is empty it doesn’t really work because then you may change your mind where you wanted to sit but even though there are 4 or 5 other people in the theater, you feel somehow pressured to sit in YOUR seats. The concept has both it’s ups and downs.
Next the concessions. They had much different things than the average cinema. In addition to standard popcorn, soda, and candy. They had pastries, sandwiches (even breakfast sandwiches), coffee, more specialized drinks, and the like. They also gave you real plates for your food to bring into the theater if you liked which was kind of cool. I had a danish and it was absolutely great. My rommate wanted a sandwich but they were premade and $8 and they didn’t look worth the price. It is not surprising that a theater overcharges but we really felt it was only the sandwiches as we got a large soda, a medium lemonade, a danish and a small popcorn for only about $12 which we thought was reasonable. But the sandwiches were not. The popcorn was also really good, instead of artificial flavoring like an average cinema, everything was made from real kernels, butter, and made fresh with an old style popper. It was great. The only real complaint here was price of sandwiches which didn’t make sense as one of the ideas of Sundance is that you can go into the cafe and order something if you are just wandering the mall and leave with just a snack and no movie. At these prices, it isn’t likely going to happen very often.
The theaters themselves were average. There wasn’t anything new or surprising, and we actually felt this was a bit of a let down. The other indie theater in town has just started installing ultra comfortable pleather seating and we kind of expected the brand new sundance would have the same, but it was standard mainstream mesh-like material and we were disappointed.
The only other complaint we had in the place was waiting for everything. There were long waits both at the ticket counter and at the concession counter. We felt that this could be for two reasons. One, the employees are all new and not used to the job yet. And two, there was a much higher density of elderly dealing with computers than you’d expect and thus, it took them a long time to do anything. I think both of these issues will get settled out in time however and I can’t blame Sundance for that. However, if this continues to be a problem in a few months then it will by and large be an issue.
Overall, we were a bit disappointed by the experience. I think the high cost of tickets alone was a bit unsettling. Especially when you consider that the pre-show entertainment isn’t exactly commercial free. They play Sundance Channel pieces which in reality is just an advertisement for the Sundance Channel. We have essentially decided that while we appreciate the additional independent theaters in Madison to see more variety in our viewing habits, we certainly prefer the other cinema over this one. Which is a shame, but it is what it is. We will likely return to Sundance when it gets a movie that we want to see, but we won’t go out of our way to go there and we will make sure to go during matinee pricing.