MoviePass: Too Much of a Crazy Good Thing

Not to kick a good thing when it's down, even a crazy good thing, but I signed up for MoviePass...then canceled in disgust after futilely trying to use it. I'd taken a Lyft to the theater, since I had to be within a hundred yards on order to check in. No problem there, I was excited by thoughts of the big bucks I'd be saving if I wanted to see a movie a day for each month. Holy wow!

But the app didn't work at the theater. The film and time were shown--but I could not check in. Nor could I get any information from the app--which I learned later was having an outage. Could I contact MoviePass by phone? Uh-uh. The message said they were too busy to take calls.

My first experience with the app and MP's customer service soured me to the extent that I followed the ticket cashier's advice and considered their new AMC Stubs/A-List program. I reviewed the brochure, did some checking online...then checked for complaints against MP. This wasn't the first app outage, I learned, and their customer service received almost universal thumbs down.

I canceled with MP and signed up with AMC's A-List program...and I'm here to tell you I'm glad that I did.

MP's $9.95 monthly fee is half of AMC's fee, it's true. And MP offers a movie a day instead of 3 movies a week. But if you have anything resembling a life, how many films can you see? No, no. Forget 'can'. How many films do you really want to see? And to see these films, are you willing to travel across town on the off-chance that the damned app might be working?

Here's something I think of as much as the math: reasons to go to the theater for movies that aren't big screen blockbusters. AMC's first class approach rings all of right bells for me. I'll pay the charge for the convenience of being able to reserve tickets on my phone and waltz straight into the theater rather queuing in to purchase 'coach' tickets. There are no  blackout periods on hot new arrivals and no restrictions on premium formats: IMAX, 3D, Dolby.

Hats off, from me, to AMC with hopes that it keeps bringing me back to a great joy I'd lost:

MOVIE NIGHT!