Ever go to the movies and have to sit through two hours of a jerk in the row behind you giving hushed commentary on the background of the movie you’re trying to enjoy? That’s what AMC’s new vaunted More Movie feature is like. Last night I tried to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was the widescreen letterboxed version, which is great. But the whole program was ruined by constant updates in the lower portion of the screen telling you about the history of the production. Who can concentrate on the movie when you’re reading stuff like “Director George Roy Hill injured his back while shooting this sequence on the side of the mountain. For the next several weeks he directed from a stretcher. He begged the crew not to tell the studio for fear of being replaced.”
This kind of trivia is okay when you feel like reading about movies. But having this stuff flash up on the screen while you’re trying to enjoy the interplay between the Newman and Redford characters is the equivalent of the jerk in the row behind you at the theater. (I wonder who the poor schlepp is that AMC hired at $5 per hour to key all this crap in…