Monthly Archives: October 2015

Cineworld Hammersmith’s decaying facade

Ordinarily, I write about plays and musicals and films. I have been known to write about writing, and about developmental work, and once or twice I have even written about a cinema. As far as I can remember, I’ve only written about cinemas with historic value, but on this occasion, it’s because a cinema has actually distracted me from the film I’ve gone to see by their sheer bald-headed stupidity.

The cinema in question is Cineworld Hammersmith. I’ve been to this cinema on a number of occasions, even though the first time I noticed it, it was shut and in such a state of disrepair that I thought it abandoned. Nonetheless, I have seen three films here, in three of their auditoria. The first two were not terribly remarkable. They lacked carpet, and had something of the feel of a hospital ward, and they have quite small screens. But other than that they were vaguely tolerable, as long as the film was good.

But tonight I was in auditorium 1 for a screening of Spectre. This being the film’s first week, and given the popularity, auditorium 1 was larger than the others I’ve visited. It was also busier. My seat (allocated) was between two other patrons, which was not surprising. What was surprising was that, when attempting to sit in it, I found the distance between the armrests was narrower than the width of my pelvis.

Now, I have sat in many seats. Some have been narrower than others, some higher, some have been more wobbly, some have been more comfortable. I have, in developing countries in South East Asia, found more than once that my ample western posterior was too much for their flimsy plastic chairs. I have also found, quite regularly, on aeroplanes and buses, seats where the distance between the seat back and the back of the seat in front is shorter than the length of my femurs, which is not terribly comfortable, as I am not equipped with joints at any point in my femurs. But never, in almost four decades on this planet (and the last two with a fully-developed pelvis), have I encountered a seat with fixed armrests that are closer together than the distance between the extremities of my pelvis.

I admit I am slightly on the tall side. I exceed the average height of men in the United Kingdom by more than ten centimetres (that’s just shy of four inches in the Old Scale). So my kneecaps are accustomed to being compressed by small seats, and I’ve learnt to sit at funny angles to compensate for stingy designers. The widest part of the human hip structure is known as the intertrochanteric width. The average for most humans is just shy of 30 centimetres. My own intertrochanteric width (I’ve checked, since encountering Cineworld’s seats) is precisely 31.3 centimetres, and the distance between the armrests in auditorium 1 at Hammersmith is, apparently, 31.2 centimetres. I know this because, upon my first attempt to sit in seat B7, I didn’t quite fit. It took me three attempts, the last of which involved substantial downward force, which was not altogether pleasant for the patrons in seats B6 and B8.

How an organisation in a relatively-advanced country like the United Kingdom can fail to recognise the need for armrests to be positioned at a distance that can accommodate above average intertrochanteric widths, I do not understand. It would make sense that a person who gets paid to design seats for humans should be at least slightly familiar with the average, as well as the outlying, intertrochanteric widths of human beings. They should also have some familiarity with the biological composition of human beings. While the femur is attached to the rest of the skeleton in a manner that permits its owner to adopt an angle that compensates for the stinginess of bus and plane seat designers, I can assure you the pelvis is not. My intertrochanteric with is fixed, and though I may be able to squeeze some of my extra flesh through these very stingy seats, it makes for a very uncomfortable film viewing experience.

Daniel Craig in a seat wider than Cineworld’s.

It seems to me that, when making a booking for a seat in auditorium 1 at Hammersmith, Cineworld’s website or staff should warn patrons that the seats in this auditorium are only suitable for people with average or below average pelvis widths, so as to reduce the embarrassment for those of us who are slightly wider than the average human.

So, given the immense distraction these seats provided, I can only say that Spectre is quite an engrossing film, as there were one or two occasions when I almost forgot that Cineworld’s ridiculous attempt to provide a seat was making me uncomfortable. Daniel Craig’s performance was not in any way squishy, and he seemed to have substantially more elbow room in his Aston Martin than I had in my seat. Ben Wishaw was as dreamy as ever, and seemed to have plenty of space in his seat in the gondola, even when he was beset by many tourists. I think the film is worth a look, as long as you can find a seat to sit in that doesn’t make you feel like you’re about to explode with rage at the idiocy of the person who made it. I give this film four out of five well-proportioned seats.