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Hello, fellow Hobbit-heads! I saw The Two Towers this evening, and it was indeed a fine movie.

Unfortunately, it was RUINED for me.

I'm sorry, I just have to vent on this...I and Mrs. Cut have been waiting for a whole year to see this, so enamored were we of The Fellowship of The Ring, and to have the movie wrecked for us was heartbreaking.

You see, two rows behind us were five young boys, all about 10-13 years old. THROUGHOUT the film, they talked, laughed, snickered, and cut up like they were in their parent's basements instead of in a public place. At NO TIME did they give ANY indication of noticing that other people were in the immediate area at all.

Early on in the movie, a man walked over and politely asked them to quiet down. That lasted until he walked away, whence the rotten behavior began anew. When they laughed out loud during Smeagol's wrenching battle with himself, I had had enough. I whipped around and fixed each one in a stare of such fury as to weld steel, put one finger to my lips in a "shush" motion, and balled my other hand into a fist. I am six feet, three inches tall and 200 pounds and work out 4 times weekly, so one might say that I am not unintimidating.

The quiet only lasted, however, for about ten minutes, then it was on again. I had to do the same thing three more times. Suffice to say, the distraction was more than enough to take me out of the movie for the remainder. Mrs. Cut was similarly annoyed, which only made me madder. She wound up holding my sleeve tightly to restrain me.

As soon as the end credits rolled, I jumped up, ready to confront the little brigands about having given me such a wonderful memory of this first viewing of a great film. They were already up and hauling for the door, and raced out of the theater at speed, giggling all the way.

The sad fact of life is, kids that age know fully well that for an adult to lay a hand to them is to face personal destruction at the hands of the law. Therefore, no limits whatsoever are on their behavior outside of the view of their parents, and few within it.

Now, myself and Mrs. Cut will have to find the time in our busy lives to see the movie again, to get the proper feel of it without distraction. Sadly, however, we will run the same risk. And no matter what, our memory of the movie will always contain that stain.

Theaters used to have ushers, to help in controlling unruly children. That was back when children, for the most part, NEEDED no controlling. I can truly say that when I was a boy, I NEVER would have behaved so in a movie! Then again, I am a movie fan, so perhaps my view is not that of a modern child with time on his hands and a screen for a baby sitter.

In any case, there is a reason why I go to movies in theaters only once or twice a year nowadays. The ONLY movies in the past five years worth seeing on a big screen were, in fact, the Rings pictures. If only we could talk Peter Jackson into digitally removing annoying kids from the theaters showing his films, all would be well.

What a disaster! After all that waiting! I haven't had any as bad as yours. I had minor misbehavors around me, but I was able to stop them with a stare and one PFFFFT!

I hope you will give it another try... Try the later show... You may get drunks, but at least they will be adults who may fear your imposing posture!

I suppose I've been fortunate in my audiences. So far I've been at 4:30 on a weekday and at noon today and the kids at the theater were actually well behaved while the movie was running (okay...so they spilled drinks even with cupholders and we had sticky floors underfoot but that didn't interfere with the movie.) However, for the most part it seemed that the kids were there with adults.

I think in your case, that could be considered "Justifiable Homicide"...lol...provided you had Tolkien fans as your jury.

I had a similar experience when my wife and I first saw Fellowship of the Ring.

Sitting behind us was a young-ish couple. The woman continually asked questions out loud, "Who is that?", "Why did he do that?", "Where are they going now?", "I thought he was a good guy?", "Who's doing all that screeching?", etc, etc...ad nauseum.

To which her fella would explain the answer to every question, equally as loud. They made NO effort to hush their voices, or speak in a whisper. What made it even worse, was that her fella was apparently only a "Movie Tolkien Fan" who got his story summary from a link on MSN.com. So, not only was he explaining things loudly, but he was explaining them INCORRECTLY! Argh! Yrchs!

After about an hour of this, I turned around and said sternly, "Look pal, I didn't spend good money to come here and listen to you poorly explain the story to your missy! Now shut it! Or you and I will go round-and-round outside, capishe?" That seemed to help.

Below us were a group of teenaged girls who thought they had some kind of divining power over the movie. They thought they should guess, out loud, what the characters were going to say next. It was like watching MST3K, only not funny. THere was an older woman sitting behind them who had apparently had enough...she stands up, leans over and yells, "HEY! The actors already HAVE a script! They DON'T need YOUR help!" lol...which got some applause from people sitting nearby.

I cannot, for the life of me, fathom what inspires this sort of behavior in public. We were raised to be polite children, but 10 times more polite when we were in public. Man, the thrashing we would have gotten if that were OUR behavior! I just don't understand what happened to good old-fashioned MANNERS. The blatant lack of, has completely cheapened the movie-going experience for me. It's not bad enough that we're paying hefty prices, both at the ticket stand, then again at the snack bar...and what do we get out of it? No control whatsoever in the actual theater...not an usher or manager in sight. Then, if you're the one to complain, you're seen as a stick-in-the-mud. How the heck does that compute?

We just simply stopped going, unless it's a movie we're both absolutely DYING to see. But, even in that case, we'll wait a few weeks for the crowds to die down, then go see the first matinee showing of the day. We went to see FotR again on a Tuesday at 1pm. There were 10 other people in the theater...it was bliss.

Theaters used to have ushers, to help in controlling unruly children

If that ever happens again, just tell them you're going to see the manager to have them thrown out if they don't cut it out! Then DO it! There is absolutely NO excuse to miss out on a movie because of the rudeness of others, especially children!