Having watched this film many times and reviewed it a couple of times already on Letterboxd, I thought I’d base this particular review on the don’ts of the Drive-In movie experience.

Being our first Drive-In we thought we’d “prepare” for the spring evening temperature dip, which in the UK can drop to anything between 10 degrees and -1. I’m talking blankets, hot-water bottles, cushions, pillows, coats, scarfs, jackets, hoodies even woolly socks! We went one step further dressing and wrapping up in most of this stuff prior to leaving so we wouldn’t have to fanny about once we got there...not great foresight as it would turn out. By the time we arrived at the venue, which was about an hour before sunset, the cabin was like the launch pad at Cape Canaveral during takeoff. 5 adults in a tin box will generate a sufficient amount of heat. I mean we were hanging out of windows and sunroofs, ringing buckets of sweat from said woolly socks...all sorts of mayhem was transpiring.

The next mishap was to wind down the passenger window during the start of the movie as the heat in the cabin was still palpable. As you’re not allowed to turn your car on, more specifically put your headlights on, during the film it meant that I had to be quick in turning on the car, opening the electric window and turning the car off. If I’d thought about it long enough I would’ve simply turned off the headlights prior to switching on the car, but all my common sense had dried up as a result of the furnace we found ourselves in. What I didn’t prepare myself for was the automatic 10 second delay in the headlights going off once I switched off the car and in my exaggerated mass hysteria I kept pressing the button to turn the car off not realising that all I was succeeding in doing was turning the car back on with an inevitable further 10 second delay. All I could do was sink further down into my seat as my headlights blasted everyone’s rearview and wing mirrors.

Finally, don’t wait until the film has started before you decide to remove the scarf and two jackets you are wearing especially if you’re not prepared to break the cardinal rule of exiting your vehicle during the film. The cabin is too small to make this kind of manoeuvre and dislocation of the shoulders is very likely to happen in this event.

As for the film itself, on paper I shouldn’t like this movie at all. I’m a shark fan, of the Great White in particular, and reverently disapprove of how they and many other sharks are treated the world over. On the flip side I simply can’t ignore this masterpiece in filmmaking and have to remove my views from the equation in order to allow art to prevail here.

Format: Digital (HD)
Platform: Drive-In Cinema

1st Review
2nd Review