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Danny Baldwin Rates the Cinépolis Experience

When you walk into the new Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas in Del Mar, you are greeted by an inviting, upscale bar and lounge area that looks refreshingly unlike the sterile lobby of a chain megaplex. After purchasing a ticket at the “concierge desk,” you make your way to a reserved seat -- an over-sized, comfortably appointed leather recliner. Unfortunately, while Cinépolis may spare you the backache of your usual trip to the movies, it will give you a much larger headache in its place.

There was reason to have hope for this addition to San Diego’s cinema-going landscape. For one, there was no place to go but up from the UltraStar Del Mar Highlands multiplex that once stood in its place -- with fixed aspect-ratio screens that cropped the images and hoards of teenyboppers talking and texting through weekend shows, it was one of the worst places to see a movie in the county. Cinépolis promised all new facilities and an expert team to back them up. Matthew Lickona detailed all the shiny new features the theater had to offer after attending a press preview event, and things sounded great.

After three weeks of Cinépolis being open, those aforementioned hopes have been effectively dashed. While the theater admittedly boasts superior auditorium design--the screens now have movable masking to show 100% of the picture and the new sound systems are robust--it is, like most every other multiplex in town, run without any regard for the patrons who come to watch movies or the filmmakers who provided them.

At $15.50-$19.50 a ticket (more for 3-D), it’s barely hyperbolic to call their poor service “robbery.”

The first couple times I attended the theater, I chalked various operational kinks up to the fact that this is Cinépolis’ first theater in the United States (they are already the biggest exhibitor in Latin America, hence the Spanish name) and they were still finding their footing. Seeing Captain America opening week, I experienced the complete failure of one of the company’s signature offerings -- in-seat food service.