Maltageddon, Eden, Bomb???

Yesterday we went to watch a local movie called Maltageddon, a parody of the bigger budget movie - Armageddon. Anyone who has checked out the cast list will know it is a funny movie, especially when the main character is the one and only Joe Demicoli.

I reserved two seats online through the Eden Cinemas website - which, by the way, took around 2 hours to complete. Their website is too slow! Talk about 'avoid queuing' in their marketing campaign!

Anyway, we arrived half an hour early and decided to take a detour to a nearby Mc Donalds. Afterwards, we made our way into the cinema complex, went up slowly up the stairs to Cinema 16, found our seats and waited for the movie to start.

About halfway through the movie, all the lights suddenly came on, while the movie was still on. Then we saw the mouse cursor on a familiar windows operating system close the movie player application. Ok, we thought, it's the interval and the person at the control room must have mistaken the pause movie button with the light switches and vice versa. Obviously this is quite a rare occurance! :)

The cinema attendants then started telling us that everyone had to get out of the cinema complex. Our first thought was that it is very unusual to get everyone out during the interval of a movie. Can you imagine trying to get everyone back in the cinema, in time for the beginning of the second half? So our next guess was that there was some kind of emergency situation.

Slowly, slowly, very slowly, all the people started making their way out of the cinema complex and in not less than 15 minutes, the cinema complex was evacuated. Near the exit, we overheard an attendant saying that there was a bomb scare, and they had to call in the army to search the building.

As everyone knows, the Maltese are very cool and relaxed people, so you can imagine how easy it was getting out of the complex with everyone blocking the exit. So, as soon as we were out of the building, we made our way down the street where it was less crowded, and to avoid the possibility of injury in case there was a real bomb.

Waiting a while before deciding to leave for home proved to be the best choice as people were making their way back inside. At the entrance we saw a couple of uniformed men with their drug and bomb seeking dogs. Thanks to these professionals the cinema complex was now safe to be in.

Somehow, it took less time to get back to our seats, but that was because, many had left for home, thinking that the second half will not be shown. We wondered if they would get a refund from mananagement if they complained.

It was time for the second half of the movie to start, so the guy at the control room, double clicked the video file, maximized it to full screen mode, right clicked and chose play. Unfortunately, the movie seemed to not continue from exactly the same point as when it was stopped and it was harder to get into the story again. Two minutes in and the movie stopped again, but the lights were still off this time. Ahhh... it was the actual interval!!!

The control room guy must be a very patient person indeed.... again, he double clicked a file (video file number 2), did his usual stuff and chose play.

It was five minutes into the second half that I managed to get my concentration on the movie back on track and fortunately the rest of the evening went smoothly without any hiccups.

As expected, the movie was brilliant, with great laughs to be had every few seconds. I would blindly recommend anyone to watch it!

To conclude this long post (probably my longest ever), if you decide to go watch this movie at the Eden Cinemas, be prepared for anything! :)