The new Cinemagic Grand at Clarks Pond is the latest and, so far, most amusing development in the regional theater chain’s evolution. Located where the old Hoyts was in South Portland (the plaza housing Home Depot and the curious closeout retailer Tuesday Morning), the folks at Cinemagic have continued their, uh, grand tradition of making multiplex moviegoing expensive, confusing, and totally satisfying.
The Cinemagic Grand is Maine’s first $10 theater (though it’s only $8 for matinees and standard discountees). The company has spent the extra cash on a few developments new to the multiplex realm. Before even getting to the seats (which are not stadium-seating cloth rocking chairs, but instead stadium-seating squishy-fake-leather rocking chairs), there's a “bistro” (a lot like an airport bar, and it has beer and wine) serving semi-fancy fare like a “Vermont” sandwich (with cheese and apple) and spinach-artichoke dip. Nearby is a "grand piano," which I had hoped would be manned by a local prodigy, but turns out to be automated. Even the employees are spiffed up, wearing button-down shirts, ties, and berets rather than the normal Cinemagic garb (ballcaps promoting the cinema's New Hampshire-based parent company Zyacorp, which beyond the six Cinemagics runs the South Portland Howard Johnson hotel).
The Grand’s most promising development turns out to be its most frustrating: When ordering tickets (online or in the theater), you’re asked to select your own seats. For a Super Bowl Sunday matinee, my companion and I picked two seats in what looked to be the fourth row. After some trouble with the touch-screen procedure, the Disney-nice young guy at the ticket booth asked me for the seat numbers and reserved them for me. (Maybe next time they’ll teach me how to do it right.)
To get to the theater, we walked by vending machines selling $4 Vitamin Waters and $3 Dippin’ Dots Ice Cream (which, if you’ll recall, was the “ice cream of the future” back in the ’90s), only to find that our seats were actually in the back. The tiny labels for row and seat numbers took some squinting and crouching to recognize (if you’re late, good luck); perhaps this fancy multiplex has ushers at busier times. Regardless, once everyone realized they weren’t sitting where they wanted to, they found better seats in the relatively empty cinema.
The Grand forgoes the annoying pre-show ads of its larger siblings, but still has the hilarious WGME-sponsored intro, with the station's news team starring in an advertisement hyping the chain’s digital-video projection system by showing off their egregiously pixelated sport coats. The film was pristine, with a lot of soundtrack details you wouldn’t catch at other local theaters.
Despite its overwhelming, hyper-enthusiastic efforts to promote modern conveniences — and the fact that its cinemas lack the convenience, shabby charm, or film selection of the Nickelodeon or the Movies on Exchange — I’m finding myself more and more smitten with the folks at Zyacorp, especially with the promise of an IMAX theater opening in Saco this year. They’re probably the only movie chain that’ll ever make you leave a showing of No Country for Old Men with a smile on your face.
