The Case for Heroes in the Half Pipe

Once I went to the Lighthouse movie theatre in Upper Hutt and delighted in the novelty (at the time) of the seat/couch combination and also pointed out the bean bag sitting in the corner, unused, but possibly a wonderful idea in front of the screen.

Fast forward several years later (more than I would care to admit to) and to Auckland, the Sylvia Park Mall, the Hoyts movie theatre. Yes a Hoyts. And guess what: they have a theatre where the only seats are bean bags.

Well, kind of. They aren’t really bean bags. They are actually wool-filled bags that can comfortably seat 2 adults and a child with minimal roll together and rustling. They cost $30 per bag (and single patrons can’t only get “half” of one) and the room itself contains about 30 of them.

For some inane marketing reason, the name of the room is called the halfpipe (this may be come skating reference that completely eludes your truly), but there are two rooms (I believe) dedicated to this type of cinema experience. The movies screened tend to be fairly family friendly fare (we went to enjoy the beanbag experience and had to suffer through National Treasure 2 – a star-studded cast (Nicholas Cage, Helen Mirren, Ed Harris) trapped in action adventure hell, the characters causing so much destruction and breaking into so many sensitive areas that they should have all been arrested for acts of terrorism, though luckily for the movie the British law enforcement forces are completely incompetent and in the USA, it pays to have the president as a confidant. But I won’t try and remember a film I was successfully managing to suppress until now...

Back to the half pipe then. While the movie itself may be mind-numbing slush (as it was) the fact one is practically horizontal on a bag of wool gives one the opportunity to close ones eyes and drift away.

The experience is not without its drawbacks: we were in the front row which means, from a lying position, you are looking down towards your feet to see the screen; and the wool is not as malleable a seating substance as polystyrene beans, meaning it is hard to craft a high back on the “chair”.

But, for a family friendly film, the children were able to move around fairly freely without disturbing the other patrons much. A definite plus if one has attention-deficit disorder children who might not like sitting down for over 90 minutes.

Verdict: Silly name, and definitely not very space-efficient, but a brilliant idea and damned comfortable. 4 beans out of 5. [National Treasure 2 on the other hand got 1 bean out of 5. Blargh]