Still courtesy of Disney Enterprises
Among some, there’s a tradition to attend movies on a holiday. Maybe it’s all that family time and the desire, if not need, to sit in relative solitude for a bit, allowing the professionals to tell a story in lieu of Uncle Jasper’s well-worn material.
In hopes of collective entertainment, we head to the show.
St. Louis, of course, is a region with a footprint larger than expected for a place with our population and one way to track the continued, outward mobility of our populace is to look at movie houses and their locations. Those cinemas still being built on a major scale, with screens of more than 10, are mostly found in the outer burbs, where people still seem to be moving. (Similarly, our urban environment is dotted with older, smaller houses, many of which have been adapted into second, or third, uses as churches, dollar stores and, sometimes, magical residences.)
Of course, population alone isn’t guaranteeing crowds, not in the day of movies in mailbox-sized rental facilities and affordable streaming services. But there’s no doubt that some correlation exists between those corners of our region seen as growth markets and the practicality of building cinema screens to entertain those people. And for those of us old enough to remember walking, first, to single-screen theatres and, then to small multiplexes, there’s still something a bit exotic about attending a show at a venue with a dozen screens.
Take the O’Fallon 14. Recently, the exurban cinema switched names, from The Great Escape to the Regal O’Fallon Stadium 14, having been taken over by the Regal Entertainment Group of Knoxville, Tenn. The space is located just next to Highway 40 at the WingHaven exit, in a plot of land that’s cut out from woods; in fact, when you drive down what’s called Calledonia Drive, you run into those woods, unless you make the obvious turn leftwards and into the expansive parking lot of the O’Fallon 14. Aside from the cinema’s parcel, there’s only a man-made lake, no doubt there for the obvious purposes of sewage; no fast-food restaurants or similar out-building purposes reside on the lot.
The O’Fallon 14 itself features the usual crop of amenities, from a well-stocked concession stand to stadium seating, though they haven’t yet taken the next step in cinema presentation: in-theatre food service with an expansive, restaurant-style menu. And while the parent Regal Entertainment Group offers Bollywood and art house films in some cities, this one’s still limited to major mainstream Hollywood fare, no doubt reflecting the relatively straightforward, narrow demographics of the surrounding communities.
On Sunday evening, 20 hours into Easter, there was a light scattering of cars on the lot, just as the 8:10 showing of Oz The Great and Powerful was set to start. With no one else in line, it was easy to stroll up, pay the two-person freight of $19 (otherwise good for a month of Netflix), and head to theatre 11, where a handful of high-volume trailers were previewing this summer’s oncoming action films. Then Oz began, with all the audio power of a newly built theatre, the sound whooshing into your ears from every pocket of the room. It was an enjoyable enough, CGI-dominant prequel, though most of the film will be forgotten in due time. Worth the $19? Well, sometimes it’s about the experience.
While seeing movies in different parts of town isn’t exactly the same dynamic as, say, having a meal or a drink in a neighborhood-type space, there’s still that mild sense of seeing how the other half lives.
