At the start of the last decade Kota Kinabalu was but a blip on the cinema entertainment map. Back then it featured the already old, but not so dilapidated 3 screens of the Golden Screen Cinema complex in the centre of town.

Today, as we enter the new decade, Kota Kinabalu has cinema screens galore. There’s the Cathay Cineplex in the town centre, Growball in Centrepoint and the newest of them all, the GSC in 1Borneo. Another GSC is taking shape in the freshly completed Suria KK Shopping Centre near Jessleton Point and will be coming online in a month or so.

With all this competition the old city GSC just couldn’t attract enough of a crowd with it’s run-down facilities to sustain it, and were closed down.

The fact that a cinema was closed down at all should really make operators of other cinema’s sit up and take notice. If there were no competition, that old GSC would have been able to do business in perpetuity.

Where’s the Movie Magic?

Growball’s no.8 theatre is arguably the best in Kota Kinabalu. Huge auditorium, big screen, every seat a winner and state-of-the-art sound.

However, the other Growball theatres are old and creaky with equipment that is starting to fail. Their only attraction seems to be the sheer volume of titles to chose from on any given night.

But more and more regularly a reminder to the projectionist (who switches on the film and goes outside) is required to either fine tune the focus, the aspect ratio or the sound.

Last night, during a showing of Tooth Fairy in Growballs theatre 3 it was obvious that a particular sound channel had something wrong with it. The actors’ voices were distant, shallow and tinny. A complaint to the projectionist uncovered an apology, but at the same time was added that it couldn’t be fix as a hardware part was being awaited from Singapore.

After a visit to the supervisor’s office a refund was offered, but some members of the author’s contingent didn’t mind the imperfect sound and so we all suffered the poor quality movie experience together.

It’s strange that, in light of the growing competition, Growball doesn’t mind running poor quality shows. The part responsible for the sound failure was on order and obviously it wasn’t just this one show that suffered as the problem was known and yet they ignored it.

To add insult to injury, the hammering outside on tiles being replaced could be felt though the whole show and heard during the quieter parts. Thumbs down for Growball on this occasion.

5 Senses

The reason people visit cinemas, as opposed to watching DVDs (pirated or otherwise) at home, is to experience a movie rather than just watch it. You smell the popcorn, you feel the vibrations of the sound in your feat, you see the larger-than-life actors on the big screen, and you taste the anticipation of a good thriller on your tongue.

If any of these senses are compromised, punters will first consider alternative cinemas and then wonder why they should pay RM7 per person to watch a movie instead of buying that pirate DVD with 4 movies for RM10.

Can you really afford for your theatres to smell like urine, Cathay, for your visuals and audio to be less than perfect Growball, or to freeze your customers in their seats, GSC?

Isn’t its time that customers get what they pay for and speak with their feet if businesses don’t deliver?

Join the discussion and share a bit about your highs and lows in the cinemas of Kota Kinabalu…