High Times

After watching In Bruges on DVD with wife and oldest daughter (I'd seen it in the theater, they hadn't) I went to IMDb (aka the Internet Movie Database, world's greatest film Web site) and checked out the message board for the movie. There was one thread that began with the question: "Is the movie a good high?"  

Here was one response: "You might have a different experience, but I saw this while stoned and I found it boring and unfunny. I wouldn't recommend wasting weed on this." 

Here's another: "Weed makes a good movie great and a shyte movie even more so that being said, in bruges in an excellent movie and i couldnt see how THC would do anything but enhance the experience" 

And here's one more: "how could marijuana make a movie anything but better....its like asking if im going to have sex with my girlfriend, will it be better if shes hot"

I do believe I live in an entirely different universe from these people, or at least our brains were made in different universes. I readily admit that as a younger man I went to movies while under the influence. Here's what I remember about those movies: very little.

I don't feel that I'm at all sanctimonious about drinking or drugs having adopted the view that if a person is not harming anyone else in the process they're entitled to get as loaded as they'd like. But how can being stoned or drunk improve a movie? I can't even imagine how one argues this point. To me it would be like arguing that food tastes better when you're asleep.

A good movie watching experience requires that our minds be focused. That's one reason that the sound of others talking is so upsetting during a movie;  it breaks our concentration.

Maybe I'm taking this IMDb discussion too seriously. After all, as great a site as IMDb is, the polls and message boards tend to be dominated by not terribly bright 19 year old boys. Evidently ones who like to visit their dealers before stopping off at the cinema.