Hooded Dementors

The letters page in TimeOut has called for nominations for London’s worst cinema, after the Renoir managed to close itself for six months for refurbishments (though TimeOut had misprinted this as “refreshments”) and re-open without any discernible difference. Shabby though the Renoir still looks, its atmosphere was not a patch on our experience at Holloway Road Odeon last night. We’d finally got around to seeing Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire and chose an evening performance to minimise the risk of disruption from over-excited, chattering children constantly needing the toilet. However, we hadn’t bargained on a group of 20 teenage hoodies turning up to trash the cinema. They jeered, smoked, coughed, talked (both to each other and on mobile phones), kicked seats, threw popcorn everywhere, flicked cigarette lighters and moved not only from seat to seat but also from screen to screen throughout the performance. You could barely hear the soundtrack of the film. The audience, unwilling to provoke the culprits into further misdemeanours, alerted members of staff, who tried to speak to the offenders but just received a torrent of abuse in return. You feel so helpless in these situations, when suddenly London turns into its trashiest alter-ego. You despise the fact that you’ve just spent £14 on a completely wasted evening. Of course it wasn’t directly the cinema’s fault, but they could have done more to evict the offenders from the screen. However, in response to our complaint, Odeon have very kindly given us two free tickets to see another film. ASBO, anyone?

REBECCA