Retro Review: The Mission Valley Years

editor's note: while it may not appear to do so at first, this Retro Review will cover Payback, Idle Hands, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, 8mm, Resident Evil, Last Action Hero, Jeepers Creepers, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Jurassic Park III, Lethal Weapon 4, The Matrix, American Pie 2, and Vanilla Sky.

From 1998 to 2002, there were many adventures at Mission Valley, a six screen multiplex in Raleigh. Sure, you could go to Imperial, which was closer, but there was an allure to Mission Valley, a theatre I'd been going to since childhood. Maybe the fact that there was a coffee place next door and a Record Exchange next to that. Or the North American Video not far away from the Rock-O-La Cafe, but Mission Valley was our home away from home when The Studio closed*.

At first, it was just that the dimly lit lobby was preferable to the bright, shiny, headache-inducing competition from Park Place 16, the new multiplex with its "stadium seating" and 25 cent summers (although we took advantage of that, too), but Mission Valley also had cheaper tickets, better popcorn, and "bladder busters" - the biggest damned drink cups in town, at a price that beat their megaplex competitors. Situated near NC State's campus, Mission Valley felt like a movie theatre instead of a conglomerated "big box" multiplex, so we gravitated towards it. Mission Valley eventually became the theatre that owners of The Rialto and Colony theatres replaced The Studio with, and while the others lean towards more "art house" fare, Mission Valley provided Hollywood fun at college-friendly prices.

While it's technically out of the year range listed above, I'd like to point out that I saw Last Action Hero at Mission Valley, and at the age of 14, it still seemed odd that the auditorium only had seven people inside (including my brother) on opening day.

The real fun kicked in during high school, as Waverly Place and Imperial slowly lost their appeal to the more fun Mission Valley. While we saw some of the "bigger" films of the late 90s and early 2000s (The Blair Witch Project, Godzilla, Lost in Space, The Fellowship of the Rings, There's Something About Mary) elsewhere, my favorite memories are tied to the lesser, but sometimes more enjoyable films.

Films like Payback, the film that would later become a comparison point for anything we hated, based on a casual response to seeing the film later that summer: "Yeah, I'd see Payback again." It was what we told everyone after watching the wretched 8mm, one of many films that could have benefited from Nicolas Cage's "Mega-Acting" but instead lumbered forward with leaden direction from Joel Schumacher. When anyone asked about 8mm, we responded with an affirmative "Yeah, I'd see Payback again."

There are a jumble of events, some tied to Idle Hands, some to Lethal Weapon 4, that I can't quite disentangle. One of the two resulted in "gum for the peasants," after we found a bin of Wrigley's gum in the lobby and dispensed them to the people waiting in line outside. The other involved a bin full of clown noses and a Patch Adams poster that two people may or may not have tried to swipe, only to stop when the assistant manager yelled "Stop!"

What I can remember is that we generally enjoyed Lethal Weapon 4 and left Idle Hands asking "now whose idea was it to see Idle Hands?" I've seen half of the former since, and none of the latter. I couldn't tell you much about Idle Hands, other than Seth Green was a zombie or something to that effect, I think he had a bottle in his head, and Devon Sawa had to save Jessica Alba from his(?) evil, severed(?) hand. That's about it.

The memories come in fits and spurts: laughing out loud when Keanu Reeves said "Whoa! I know Kung Fu" in The Matrix; spoiling The Phantom Menace for someone by pointing out the fact that since Liam Neeson's character has never been mentioned in any Star Wars film he was going to die; my total disdain for the "kid friendly" tropes of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, where no main character was remotely in danger at any point and the hero murders someone and doesn't think twice about it; realizing that American Pie 2 was a steep drop-off from the first film; and catching a not-even-veiled reference to the film Vanilla Sky was a remake of, Abre los Ojos.

At a certain point, a few of us entered what I can only describe as the "MST3K" phase of movie-going, and embarrassing period where we were nearly thrown out of multiple auditoriums. This was no more evident than during Jeepers Creepers, a film that begins knocking off The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and only gets worse from there. We were heckling loudly, and someone complained, bringing the manager down to let us know we'd better shut up or be escorted out of the theatre. Of course, once the rest of the audience realized what they were actually watching, we sat quietly while they berated the movie.

The chatter didn't seem to borrow anyone during Paul "What Script?" Anderson's Resident Evil, a movie only surpassed in its crapitude by Resident Evil: Afterlife; we were not kind, but the film deserved its ridicule. Of course, seeing Resident Evil, Jeepers Creepers, Dungeons and Dragons, The In Crowd, and Highlander: Endgame only strengthened the theory that the Cap'n and friends would go see literally any horrible movie released in theatres (which, for 2000-2002 was probably true).

The last anecdote doesn't so much cover Jurassic Park III (a mostly forgettable film) as what followed it: a friend of mine was driving me home, and I don't think it's unfair to characterize him at that period as a "functioning alcoholic." He had two beers - one was open, one wasn't - and I trusted him to safely deliver me back, until we pulled right into a police stop, or "drunk trap." He, being underage at the time, panicked, and in his infinite wisdom opted to pour both bottles on the floorboard of his truck, so that the open containers of alcohol were at least empty. As you can gather, it didn't help, and while he went downtown, I drove a truck smelling strongly of alcohol home, and then picked him up several hours later outside the county jail. Comparatively speaking, I can tell you that the pterodactyl in Jurassic Park III looked ridiculous, and that the velociraptors had feathers. I guess that's a little better than Idle Hands.

I still don't know who picked Idle Hands, but for once, it wasn't me.


* The Studio, as I might have mentioned, was the closest thing Raleigh had to a "Grindhouse" theatre when I was a teenager. It was there I saw Trainspotting, Trees Lounge, The Faculty, and The Funeral.