Send anonymous thanks, confessions or accusations—changing or deleting the names of the guilty and innocent—to “Hey, You!” c/o OC Weekly, P.O. Box 10788, Costa Mesa, CA 92627-0247, or e-mail us at le*****@oc******.com">le*****@oc******.com.
To the pair of middle-aged couples who sat two rows behind me at the 7:30 p.m. screening of Enemy at the Gates on March 31 at Edwards Charter Centre in Huntington Beach: I can put up with uncouth, open-mouth popcorn chewing. Long, loud spurts of laughter over things that are only mildly amusing are okay, too. I can even take the occasional “Don't go in there!” during horror flicks. But the one thing I—and I'm sure everyone who sat within five rows of you—can't stand is a running commentary describing everything that's happening onscreen. Your chatter wasn't confined to scenes that contained surprising plot twists; you described each event as it was being shown, like, “Now he's crawling over the dead bodies looking for a place to hide,” or, “Now he's trying to use string and a pocketknife to get his rifle,” or, “Now he's looking both ways before crossing the street.” I turned around to see if one of you was blind or talking into a cell phone, but all four of you were gazing up at the screen, babbling away. The only time you shut up was during the gratuitous sex scene, which one of the females in your party introduced with, “Are they going to . . . Oh . . . my . . . gawd . . .” The silence was quickly followed by the repressed rustling of what I guess was the foil wrapping around a stick of gum, which you chewed like there's no tomorrow. Been a long time, honey? Not long enough for the rest of us. After the couple onscreen climaxed, it was back to the play-by-play. Look, if you four knuckleheads can't watch a movie without telling one another what's going on, I've got an alternative way for you to spend Saturday nights: they're called video rentals.
