Extreme Planet helped me appreciate movies and grow up as a cinema fan, but like everything you grow out of there comes a moment where you are forced to move on, because as much as you’ve matured and demand a better movie-going experience, this place has stayed true to its beginnings established when I first went, back in 1999. The building, located next to the Multicentro Mall in Avenida Balboa, has been one of the staples of the city in the past decade or so and has strategically positioned itself as one of the most unique movie-going experiences in the country, at an affordable price.

I recently went there with the intention to watch the only subtitled release of “Ratatouille” in the country, since the zeitgeist regarding animated films is that they’re for kids and kids don’t like to read translations on the screen. In the last 5 years, I can count the times I’ve gone to Extreme Planet with less than 10 fingers… in fact, I’ll tell you which movies I saw:

• Dawn of the Dead
• Farenheit 9/11
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Cellular
• Shrek 2
• The Omen (remake)
• The Day After Tomorrow

Now, consider this: a movie ticket worth $4 dollars, half price on Wednesdays. Extreme Planet is the only place in Panama that has “VIP” screens, with number seating and tan-colored reclining chairs instead of regular theater seats and sticky floors, all of it for $6 bucks a head. Extreme Planet is also the only theater in the country where you can order food (not nachos or popcorn, but food samplers, pasta, steak, whatever) from the Bennigan’s restaurant that’s in the building. You can order drinks as well; my experience watching “Cellular” was very maximized by the fact that my friend and I kept ordering beers, in the end making fun of Chris Evans’ nipples and how Jason Statham should crosskick them off the face of the earth. With all these sexy features then, you could say that Extreme Planet is one of the best theaters around, right? Well, it technically is, but there’s one thing that completely kills the love affair for me.

When I was an excitable young lad, my friends from school and I would go every Friday to Extreme Planet to catch whatever movie was on and basically hang out. The place has always been 3 floors, with an arcade, the theater, and the Bennigan’s restaurant and tavern, the latter being over 18 only. Of course, like many things in Panama, the rules are flexible and if you looked old enough they wouldn’t ask you for an ID. Anyway, the point is that we would go like we were going to a club, and everyone else from my generation felt the same way: the girls would wear these ridiculously short skirts, high heels, cleavage-powered tops and too much make-up… to watch a movie. To watch a movie and maybe have a soda at the restaurant, with the slight hope that the waiter will fall for the grown-up get-up and let them drink cocktails. It was fun. Of course, like everything, we grew up and when we got ID’s we could get into the Bennigan’s Tavern and got shitfaced with one or 2 drinks of rum or whatever. I’m pretty sure my first hangover was from a night in the Bennigan’s Tavern, probably in either a Friday Night 3×1 in beer and drinks or their St. Patrick’s Day bashes. Hell, I lost my virginity to a girl I met one night at the Tavern too, one of those few times where I could grow some facial hair and slip past the door even though I was 15. But see, after that golden age where all of this was the coolest thing since fried rice, I went to Cancun for my high school prom and developed a near-Highlander threshold for alcohol, picked up more experience in life, my intuition was perfected and years passed and I’d get a much wider world view. The problem was that where I grew as a person and naturally demanded more from my Extreme Planet experience, Extreme Planet stayed exactly the same. The people remained the same even though the establishment accomplished the nigh-impossible feat of surviving a generational shift as a place for fun in Panama. It also survived the opening of 2 super malls (Multicentro and Multiplaza) with a very long and arduous facelift that, once it was done, made the place unrecognizable for me. The second I went in and made the line to buy my tix for “Dawn of the Dead” and heard the same bullshit gossip the 15-year olds were talking about behind and in front of me, I knew the place’s soul remained unchanged.

You go into the theater and you have crowds of 15-year olds who go to the movies to hang out, talk on their phones and be annoyingly loud in the row in front of you. In the row behind you, there’s a group of rude 30-somethings doing the same exact thing. I’ve thought about this for days while planning the output of this piece, how this theater experience is so different from the other theater chains where you see the same thing happen, though in a much lesser degree. I’m a guy that loves communal experiences, and likes to have his movie appreciations maximized by the crowd he watches the flick with. In the end, I believe that Extreme Planet would be my favorite in terms of crowd experience if their attention was on the movie. Since (it seems) the people that go to Extreme Planet go because they want something to do, somewhere to go or whatever without respecting the sanctity of the movie theater, they don’t care about the movies they watch, and because of that they talk like if they were in a club, do not put their phones on silent and when they ring they pick up the phone, talking as if they were standing next to a jet turbine, and so on and so forth. It’s frustrating for any movie lover, how the crowd you’re sharing this experience with doesn’t care about the movie, and it doesn’t care about you.

The VIP rooms are a lot more civil in terms of audience behavior, and they’re worth checking out just for the sake of enjoying a movie on a big screen sitting on chairs so comfortable you are likely to pass out. It’s a great place overall, the people are friendly and you get free stuff with every movie ticket you buy (stuff like a free side order when you buy a meal, free popcorn/soda), free ice cream, etc.) and they also have a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins on the ground floor. There’s a nifty lounge bar that sells sushi and drinks if you’re on the go, and ATMs if you’re short on cash. Valet parking and six stories worth of parking spots are available as well, even though sometimes that much parking space is still not enough… specially when there are soccer games, special events at the Tavern and, in few occasions, summer blockbuster openings. They also have a VIP pass card thingy that gives out a ridiculous amount of stuff for a $30 monthly fee. The sound isn’t the best, the projectionists aren’t the best either, but the joint has an irresistible charm that’s kept them afloat all these years. I’d go a lot more, if it wasn’t for all those kids, both young and old, talking on the phone and amongst themselves while I try to enjoy my movie. To check movie times and other inquiries, you can call them at 214-7022.

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