This is a guest post by Mr. Snacks.
I’ve always been a lover of movies, and in particular the experience of seeing a big budget blockbuster in a great theater. Like many other things, as the world shut down in 2020, I saw movie after movie I was looking forward to get placed on indefinite hold and I added “seeing a movie in a theater” to the top of my “what I can’t wait to do when the world reopens” list.
So, it was a bit disappointing last summer when several studios announced their opening dates for movies I was excited for…. with the first one releasing 4 days after we left for Puerto Rico. Doh! I had a theater picked near us to go in Puerto Rico but the timing just never worked out and (insert tragic violins), we had such nice weather and no days of rain so I just never made it a priority.
I figured Puerto Rico was going to be my last best shot for a while to see a movie in English, but looking at the theater websites in Panama City, we figured out that they list American movies as either dubbed (DUB), or Subtitled (SUB). One weekday I decided to try out a subtitled showing, figuring it would be in English and subtitled in Spanish and hoped I’d gotten it right (while my Spanish is ok, it isn’t good enough for a 2-hour action movie with no pause button).
There are several theaters near us in Panama City, but the closest one is a Cinepolis VIP theater. I didn’t know a VIP theater from any other one, but as it turns out, it’s super fancy with reclining leather seats and food service at your seat (see photo). I may not understand a darn word of the movie, but I’ll do it in style. A ticket cost $15 compared to $6 for the non-VIP theaters elsewhere in the city, so while still a bit cheaper than the US, I was definitely paying a premium for the luxury option. The theater was virtually empty (mostly because it was a weekday, and I was seeing it late in the movie’s run) and felt very safe.
As the movie started, I held my breath until I knew what language the characters would be speaking, and it was — Mandarin. The first 10 minutes of the movie had the narrator speaking Mandarin, subtitled into Spanish. Sooo close. After laughing at the surprising little challenges that come with living abroad, I made do reading the Spanish subtitles (my Mandarin is a bit rusty) and eventually the movie shifted back into English.
During our time in Panama City, I’ve had a chance to see two additional movies (all in English with Spanish subtitles and only small segments in a third language) on rainy afternoons. I am feeling thoroughly caught up on my US culture fix before heading to much smaller cities in Guatemala and Mexico for the next few months.