I just came back from Japan after a short (??) onsite stint at work and had to do the usual round of courtesy calls at all our relatives place. This gave me an opportunity to travel to three metros - Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. Needless to say , I was also dying to catch up with 6 months of Hindi, Kannada and Tamil movies and I must confess that I did manage to see quite a few of them. But the reviews on those will follow. What I would like to speak about here is the amazing proliferation of the multiplex culture. I had the chance to visit Fame Adlabs and R-AdLabs in Mumbai, the Satyam complex in Chennai (I guess we can call it a multiplex) and Innovative Multiplex in Bangalore (which is the subject of my present review) and I was pleasantly surprised to see crowds thronging on even weekdays.
Innovative Multiplex in Bangalore is located at Marathalli which is around 6-10 kms outisde the city towards ITPL. While the fact that it is located outside the city has its minuses like accessibility coz of lack of public transport, problem of getting autorickshaws back home after the night show, the plus is that it takes a good long ride to reach there which can be a welcome relief during weekends.
My friend and host in Bangalore was not aware if tickets could be booked through the net so we reached the hall an hour before time to ensure that we did not miss out. There were 4 four screens and the marquee/display clearly listed out which were the movies being screened. But the ticket counters contradicted the display and this led to a little bit of confusion. The counter was manned by smartly dressed, polite customer service reps. We had planned to see SAMAY and the tickets were priced at Rs 75 for first class and Rs 90 for the balcony, affordable in my opinion. (vis a vis Fame Adlabs and the other Mumbai multiplexes) I later heard that flexible pricing had been introduced after the release of Kal Ho Na Ho and black marketing was also rampant.
Once we had confirmed tickets, we had to park our vehicle and we did not have any problem since there was loads of space available. Since the multiplex had a mini Food court within, we grabbed some sandwiches and coffee. There were some options too in the form of chaat and South Indian light tiffin items. The food quality was good and the prices were reasonable. However there was hardly any space to sit and enjoy the snack since there were very limited seats and the crowd was swelling by the minute.
Another let down was the floor design and arrangement. There was only one passage way which served as both an entrance and exit and so when shows ended, the people flocking out adding to those waiting to get in was simply put chaotic. After successfully wading thru the crowd to get into the hall, the interior decoration impressed. The hall was tastefully done, the ceiling was reasonably high, the speaker system was excellent and the quality of the picture on the screens was above average. However the seats seem to be made of slightly inferior plastic when compared to the ones we usually find in the other multiplexes (Sree or Studio 5 for example in chennai) and the leg space could have been better. The movie started on time which is something to be appreciated since I have seldom seen it happen in Mumbai and the air conditioning was also on. I am not sure if I was imagining but I did hear some sounds from the screen adjacent to ours so I guess the screens were either too close to each other or the walls weren’t totally sound proof. Come intermission time and it was time for snacks again - different varieties of pop-corn, ice creams, tea and coffee were available at the canteen inside. The movie restarted exactly after 10 mts and ended on time without any power interruptions or glitches.
On the whole it was a very pleasant experience though the same cannot be said about Samay :)
This is my first review on MS and I hope to stay here for sometime. Thanks a lot for reading this review. Pls drop in at the comments section and offer tips to help me churn out better reviews.