Arclight Dims at the Dome

I have swallowed--hook, line and sinker--the idea of Arclight Cinemas. I bought into the $14 tickets. I joined the membership club even before I set foot into the theater.

I first went to Arclight to see “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” and I loved every minute of the experience: the sound, the seats, the lack of advertisements, the picture. Going to the movies is a redefined experience.

Then comes the first blockbuster of the summer, “Spider-Man.” I cannot wait to see this at Arclight, and this time I want to see it at the Dome--the refurbished Cinerama Dome.

According to the Arclight Web site, it has even more added features than the multiplex auditoriums. I sold my friends on the idea of $14 tickets by reciting news articles and the Web site.

I loved telling them that the theaters “exceed THX standards” with their state-of-the-art “Kinoton projectors, JBL speakers and Dolby and SDDS sound systems.” Some of them asked me if I was a spokesman for Arclight.

I bought the tickets online; a bunch of tickets had already been sold, so I had to take seats in the back of the theater, Row Z.

Everything I had bought into, and therefore sold my friends on as well, was false for Row Z.

It seems that the moviegoing experience described doesn’t fully apply to the last five or so rows in the Cinerama Dome. Imagine the dome and a circle’s perimeter. The last couple of rows are outside this perimeter, underneath the projection booth. This makes most of the features of the Arclight movie experience moot.

All of the speakers (and even the projectors) are way in front of you. I could hear the people around me eating their caramel popcorn and the girls talking about Tobey Maguire’s abs better than I could hear the film.

Here’s a little more sensory overload. Imagine this space (outside the perimeter) with a short ceiling and walls on three sides, jammed with five rows of people. The warmth of body heat was unbearable for the first hour, not to mention the combination of popcorn, chocolate, hot-dog and other less pleasant smells.

I have had better theater experiences at the Bose store in the mall--and those were free.

PAUL D. LEDESMA

Los Angeles