This review is for those people who value their time. It is for those who are aware and make informed decisions before putting in their resources (Time, Money etc.).Before I give my review about E-square, Pune I give my background pertaining to Pune and Multiplex culture. I have more than 3 years of experience in living in Pune (That means I have seen most of the city) and I have around a decades experience of watching movies in multiplexes accross India. Just taking Pune in account, I have watched movies in all the multiplexes in Pune.
My review is based on my very very recent experience with E-Square (ES). What I have observed in ES is they don’t care for people’s time. They have a very casual attitude towards punctuality. And, I bet, for worse they don’t regret. They are unprofessional. Following these thoughts I have decided that I will never watch a movie in ES. They don’t deserve to be given Even a ticket worth of money.On Feb 17, 2007 at 10:15pm and Feb 18, 2007 at 10:45pm I went to ES to watch Black Friday (BF) and Blood Diamond (BD) Respectively. Both the shows had at least 15 minutes delayed start.On BF’s day audience was kept waiting outside the cinema-4 hall for atleast 15 minutes - scheduled time for show was 10:15pm But there was no sign of it starting till 10:30pm.
Pune has a very patient public so they refrained from taking any actions and prefferred shaking their legs, staring here and their and pointlessly killing their time. On the BD’s it was the same story, even worse. show was again 15 minutes behind the schedule - show was to be started at 10:45pm but till 11:00pm there was no sign of it starting. People, being what they are, even when they have problem with Delays they will tolerate. But this time I got irritated by this familiar forced uninformed delay.I started looking for the personel behind scheduling shows.
I learnt he goes by the name Mr. Suraj R. Sharma (Operation - Department). I located him and asked for the reasons behind these regular delays. Info that I got from what he told me was that Pune gets a small number of prints for each movie and physical tranfers of these prints take place from one theatre to another. (Difficult to digest! why? latter. But Did you know this? Atleast I didn’t!) He told me that BD’s show is delayed because person carrying the print from INOX to ES got delayed in traffic. (Trffic in Pune after 9:30pm! hmmmm...interesting...Getting some digestion problem..burp)Now lets assume that print of BD was getting shared between INOX and ES and this physical transfer of print was taking place. This assumption raises a few questions:
How come INOX still has a 10:30pm show of BD? Recall ES has a 10:45pm show and by assumption print is shared, So, Does it mean that INOX wraps up the show in 5 Mins (10 Mins for physical transfer to ES).
How much business sense does it make to have time wasting exercise of physical transfers of prints when they can do away with it entirely by running more shows at a single venue and have each a share in revenues? Personally it does make a lot of sense.
Obviously I found his arguments absolutely baseless. I told him that what I feel is they are not meeting the minimum service standards and this comes as an apt case for consumer court. So, I insisted on having a written information from him about the time the show will start but he refused.
He insisted on me dropping him a mail and following their process. I fail to understand what process they’ll be having for these regular delays when they can show the honest timings and entirely do away with these delays.In the light of the assumption I made above I suggessted Mr. Sharma that if time gets regularly wasted like this than why don’t he accounts for it in the show timings. I told him that he could have had 11:00pm show instead of 10:45pm show.
Nobody will say anything to him for that (atleast he won’t be beaten for this). I guess this was too complex a thing to understand for him.Later I observed that my voice level was rising every moment and with him failing to understand my point, I decided to give it a break and head for MY LAST MOVIE IN ES (BD, remember). I reached cinema- 3. Movie had started by then but just 2 minutes earlier in the timeline (gatekeeper gave me this info). Movie is long but it is such a beautiful movie that length never becomes a problem.What I did not like most was people’s laid back attitude.
I observed that people were getting restless due to forced delays, they were cursing the theatre management but no one wanted to do anything. They like being passive and being controlled. I am sure they will again go to ES, pay them money for movie which ES doesn’t deserve, wait pointlessly for show to commence, curse the management of ES, watch movie, go home and forget whatever happened to them. And this will go on and on.I wonder When general public will rise, ask questions not curse, control the system and feel satisfied and happy about life and nation in general.Jai Hind!