Just Not Into You

I recently (and finally!) saw He's Just Not That Into You at the movie theater. The film certainly won't win any Best Picture or Best Acting nominations, but it was a cute chick-flick and better than a great deal of the fluffy romantic movies churned out nowadays. I don't think it deserved the heavy criticism it provoked from some critics.

The most notable point about my viewing of the film, however, is that I saw it at Regal Battery Park where they were offering it with OC (Open Captions). This was my first time there. Similar to when you go to a foreign film and the English subtitles appear on the screen, this film had green (?) subtitles for everything being said. The problem was that the subtitles were very hard to read: almost transparent, and green. This is opposed to the typically strong, white captions like in foreign films or on DVDs when you click on the subtitle option. I really had to strain my eyes to read the captions. I am assuming that this poor mode of captioning is due to the manufacturer's desire not to "bother" or distract people who don't need the captions. If that's the case, then don't go to that particular showing of the film! (The film was being shown in non-OC theaters at the same Battery Park place at different times, so it's not a big deal to find an alternate showing.) And also, many people who don't have any hearing loss still enjoy captions, so I really don't understand the theater's reasoning for such terrible captioning.

In the absence of better OC film captioning in the city, I will continue to frequent the few theaters (Chelsea Clearview and AMC on 42nd St.) that offer Closed Captioned (CC) films. This is also known as Rear View Window (RVW) captioning because the viewer uses a small screen to reflect the captions coming out near the projector in the back of the room. Because it's only visible to the viewer with the RVW device, it's not as "intrusive" and known as CC rather than OC. I have enjoyed this form of captioning and haven't had much of a problem with it.
In summary, I'm just not that into Battery Park's use of OC.