The Fall of the House of MoviePass
Four months ago I read a Los Angeles Times article about a service called MoviePass. It was a ticketing service where for nine dollars a month, you could see unlimited movies. Part of me thought it sounded too good to be true. What’s the catch? Did they get any kickbacks from the candy counter? Still, it sounded intriguing. I would be heading home to Fresno the next month (I was about to graduate with my MFA in Writing and Publishing) and summer in Fresno is well, hotter than Hades. Although I had air conditioning, it would be nice to see movies and not worry about the money portion of it. Plus there were some movies coming out in May I definitely wanted to see. So I signed up for the quarterly plan, twenty-seven dollars. I awaited my MoviePass to come with baited breath.
Two weeks later, I had the MoviePass card. Yay! To celebrate my thesis being done early, I decided to go see A Quiet Place the next Saturday. After yoga, I walked to the movie theater. I made a point of following directions and checking in to the movie. My excitement was building. I’d wanted to see this movie for a while.
I walked into the theater, ordered my ticket, then gave them my MoviePass card. The young man ran it through. “It’s been declined.”
“What?” I felt like some deadbeat trying to get a beer at a 7–11. “But I know there’s money on the card. I just received it.”
“Let me try again,” he said. He did. “It’s declined.”
By then there were people behind me. I was near tears, mostly embarrassed. “Let me step aside and try to find my ATM card,” I managed to say.
By then the manager was at the box office booth. He looked at my card. “You know, we’ve been having issues with them. You come here regularly. Why don’t you go on in and we’ll try the card again later?”
I was so grateful for his kindness I said sure. I saw the movie, however, I was bothered. How come it didn’t work? Was it too good to be true? After the movie, I walked to my dorm. I sent a note to the support desk saying what happened, then asked what was going on. Three days later I received an email from the Movie Pass support desk. They said I had money in my account, then gave me a friendly reminder that I should check-in within a half-hour before the movie starts, plus do it within walking distance of the theater. Which I did, but then I thought wait, maybe I screwed up the algorithm by checking in too early.
The next two weeks I graduated with my MFA, then moved back from New England to California. It was great to be back, but already warm. I decided to treat myself and go see I Feel Pretty. The morning I was planning on seeing the movie, I checked to see what time it would be playing. MoviePass asked me to log in. I did.
Then I received a message: It was an unauthorized device. Please try again later. What? Being stubborn, I tried again. Same result. Finally, I googled the Movie Pass unauthorized device. Apparently, others were having problems like I was. Thank you, Jesus! The problem was on Apple devices normally when it was installed on the iPhone, it would also be installed on the Ipad. This made sense. I uninstalled the Movie Pass app on my Ipad, then turned off my phone. Twenty minutes later, I restarted it. Hit Movie Pass app again. Still coming up with the unauthorized device message. What was going on? By then I missed the first matinee, and I simply didn’t have the patience to deal with it much longer. After that life sped up: I went on a vacation to Nashville, then a writing residency in Knoxville. In Tennessee my phone went through an update, then the MoviePass app was updated as well and was working again. Fantastic. I wanted to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor when I got back, so this would work out fine.
Then I accidentally dropped my phone on the sidewalk. The glass shattered, and the phone sounded fuzzy. When I came home, I ordered a new phone. Three days later, the new phone arrived. I installed some apps, including Movie Pass. Okay, let’s get this show rolling! I logged in, then once again received the unauthorized device message. Huh? My old phone was sitting there looking sad, knowing it would go to The Land of the Misfit Broken Phones. I uninstalled all the apps, then tried again on the new phone. Again, unauthorized device. Frustrated, I wrote customer service a note saying that even though I had uninstalled the app on the old phone, it wasn’t working on the new phone. I sent it and waited for an answer. And waited. And waited. After ten days, I had enough. I wasn’t having any luck with the customer service, so I decided to go to Twitter. By then there were ticked off people tweeting to MP because of Peak Pricing, where if you went to a certain movie at a certain time, you had to pay extra. I decided to be ticked off about that later, but this time just concentrate on getting the app working again. I tweeted to them detailing my problem. A day passed. No response. They were too busy responding to the Pissed Peaking Pricing Protesters. I sent a follow-up tweet. Normally I wouldn’t complain so publicly, but I was so frustrated by then. Finally, I received a response. They private messaged me, asking me for more details. I gave it to them. In hours, it worked.
Before anything else could go wrong, I went and saw Won’t You Be My Neighbor the next day and loved it. Still, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Why did it take so long to get back to me? Why have a rule that the app could only be on one device? Was it really worth the twenty-seven dollars for all this aggravation? It was coming close to renewal. There were still so many movies I wanted to see, especially in the fall. I’m not working right now, my savings becoming a distant memory. Now that everything had settled down, maybe I was being too harsh. I could give them a second chance.
Then the weekend of the 28th happened when many people tried to go see the latest Mission Impossible movie but Movie Pass ran out of money.Wait a minute, how do you run out of money? Wasn’t it supposed to be like a credit card? Wasn’t it all prepaid? What was going on? Then they made an announcement: some movies would be blocked on the app. Three of them-Christopher Robin, Three Identical Strangers, and Eighth Grade, were movies I wanted to see. That was the final biodegradable straw. If they were going to make it more difficult to see Christopher Robin, it was time to bid them farewell. Monday morning the news was abuzz about the failure of MoviePass not working on one of the busiest movie weekends.
When it was fixed, why didn’t they offer their clients something extra, like an extra movie to see that month? Instead, we had blackout movies, then we couldn’t see movies at certain times, and oh yeah, prices were going up. They made it very easy for me to cancel my subscription.
There was a warning that if I changed my mind and wanted to reactivate my subscription, I’d have to wait nine months. All I could think was in my best Karen Walker voice was this: “Oh honey. One of us will be here in nine months. It’s going to be me.”
MoviePass was becoming the dysfunctional boyfriend who always says he won’t do meth but did it anyway. It became the character in the movie that screws up and you’re sitting there thinking don’t don’t but they did it anyway. knew I did the right thing for myself, but I felt a little sad as well. When I saw Won’t You Be My Neighbor, it was so seamless. I checked in, bought the ticket, then I was in the theater. I sobbed when I saw Mr. Rogers on the screen, in his buttoned-down sweater. When MoviePass worked well, it was like a fine movie, with no false notes. When it worked badly, it was an Alan Smithee film that made you enraged because it was so badly done. And now we are waiting for the final credits to rise for the experiment called MoviePass so we can rise, pick up the trash, and leave the theater, putting the experience behind us.
