I am quite peeved with PVR. at Ampa Skywalk near Anna Nagar. As of now, Ampa is Chennai's biggest mall. Situated beside the stinking Cooum, at the crazy NMR-Poonamallee junction with stratospheric levels of pollution and decibel count. Kudos to the location.Express Avenue (EA) at Royapettah, which will soon be the biggest, however is at a mundane cleaner location and center of the city while simultaneously bordering Citi Bank at the other end. Totally spice less. So going back to Ampa,my first irritation is with the name of the mall. Whoever has heard of a mall called Ampa? That is like calling a tech park Senthil Velavan IT Park. Add Peeliamman Thunai to it, and it sounds awesome. A small background on Thunai. All cabs,autos and taxis in Chennai think that their lives are in utmost danger on the roads. Hence they want divine intervention. So 9 out of 10 cabs/autos/taxis in Chennai have a bold so-and-so Amman Thunai. Thunai, I suppose is company. Since Amman always accompanies these auto drivers, they now have the courage to drive at break-neck speeds and flout the rules because Amman will take care of them. I propose that we discard the Thunai sentiment. I am sure the count of the erring drivers will reduce by 50%. So what were we talking about? Ennapa? Illa pa it is Ampa. Right.So let us add a Vaidhya Veera Raghava Perumal Thunai to it. Super. So what about the skywalk? Skywalk brings images of a bridge at the 50th floor connecting the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia.An Indianised poorer version could be a bridge at the 10th floor. This Ampa Skywalk bridge, decked in yellow, is above the 4th floor, connecting 2 wings of the complex. Kickass I say! So we walk through the Skywalk and enter the red-light area called PVR Cinemas. There is Red everywhere. Red lights, red carpets, red counters etc. It resembles a red-light area literally and figuratively. The entire place is so badly done that it reminds one of some village mela. The PVR at Hyderabad/Bangalore is no better. The red aspect is equally overboard and flashy there.
The seating is actually pretty cool, of course in red. No cribs about this. But the seats were so close to the screen that I could see the hero's nostril hair. God knows what other hair would be visible from the chair. There were just 10-12 rows of seats in all with a huge screen in front. It was like a big screen in my hostel mess or common room. An aside - To all IT industry managers who want to give a motivational speech to their donkeys(also called reportees): Common is NOT EQUAL TO Come on. OK? Please take care while mailing. We checked out the food counter during the interval.part from the main pop-corn and free calories drinks counter, there were other vendors out there to squeeze out our blood. There was some hot-dog selling for 75 bucks. Thanks to the huge queue at the main counter, we decided to check out the non crowded HotDog. We ordered 1 veg Hot dog. I got 2 long loaves of bread with a pinkish stuffing. I wondered if that was dog meat, served hot and hence the name. I cross checked with the guys twice. Their repeated assurances did not satisfy me completely, but I still dug my teeth into that. A week-old rotten bitter gourd curry would have tasted better. Hot Dog it seems. Even a dog will not eat that.
We got back to our seats. Matter over, THE END and we came down. The mall issues an IT-company-access-card type token for parking, to be paid after the show. I gave it back at the counter and the guy coolly asked for 30 bucks. What the #$#$? "Why?", I asked. "20 rs for 2 hours, 10 for every hour above that", he said. So 30 bucks for a 2.5 hr movie. I made a quick calculation on the long spiral way out. 120 for ticket, 20 for online, 75 bucks for Idiotic Dog and 30 for parking.Close to 250 per head! I swore I would never revisit PVR. Sathyam is so so cool and better. It is THE BEST multiplex among Hyd-Chn-Bang in my opinion. The ticket costs 120, online is just 15 bucks, and parking 10 bucks, and the interiors are far classier. Totally looking forward to the new Sathyam at EA and hoping for one at Hyd also, the Gult that he is. For the record, the owner is the son of some Reddy MP from Nellore and stays at a palatial bungalow just 2 min from my office. Reddy garu, you rock! PVR - no comments. I think even this guy is Gult. Not sure
Give me a normal 50 bucks theatre please!
