Please Don't Die, MoviePass. (It's Probably Going To Die)

For those who don’t know what MoviePass is, it’s a wonderful app where you pay 9.99 a month and you get to go see one movie a day for free. Any movie you want, any time of day, you just walk into the theater, click “I’d like to go see this movie and pay zero dollars for it, thank you very much” on the app, then collect your ticket and walk in. It’s 9.99 a month! You know how much it costs to go see a movie in 2018? About 16 bucks. If this all sounds too good to be true, that’s probably because it is. You see, businesses are supposed to make money and when your business plan is “charge less for 30 movies than it costs to go see one movie” then you’re going to be hard-pressed to make money.

Nevertheless, I can’t have MoviePass die on me. It’s the most important thing in my life right now. I never went to the movies before I had a MoviePass, the last time I regularly went to the theater was when we’d go on mall dates on Friday nights in middle school then go see a movie just to suck face in the back of the showing of some deeply emotional flick like “Anywhere But Here,” starring Natalie Portman as a smart kid with a terrible mother.

Before MoviePass I’d go home every single day after work, eat candy, and watch Netflix on my couch, alone, like an emotionally depressed loner. Now, I go to the movies three times a week and eat candy, alone, like an intellectual who appreciates the arts. I’ve seen all the new movies! I can participate in conversations about popular culture rather than just reciting lines from The Office and hoping they still land. I saw Black Panther while sitting next to a black father and his three young boys and shared their excitement in seeing folks who looked like them represented as superheroes. I saw Jumanji and belly laughed at the unrelenting hilarity of Kevin Hart. I saw A Quiet Place and was sore the next morning from my muscles being so tense the whole time (I also learned that popcorn is incredibly loud so I started just putting it in my mouth and waiting for it to get soggy enough to just swallow). I saw The Post and… I don’t really know, I never thought about that movie again because it wasn’t very good. I saw Infinity War the other day and now I understand all the memes.

None of this is possible without MoviePass. I’d never have seen any of these movies, I would have been stuck on my couch watching the first 5 minutes of a standup special or new show before deciding, “Not for me,” and retreating to Scranton, PA. Please, MoviePass, don’t condemn me back to that sad life. Let me continue enjoying the life of a movie critic, sitting alone in a dark room but it’s not sad because I have Buncha Crunch, popcorn, and a big screen. You must live on.

But don’t raise your prices because then I’ll be mad about that too.