Should Cinemas Offer A Refund If You Disliked The Film?

It’s time to look into whether cinemas should offer a refund if you watched a movie you didn’t like in their establishment. It’s a tricky conversation to have and John Barrowman is kind of to blame for it coming up again.

The actor John Barrowman caused an uproar over social media over the weekend in a now taken down video (which Barrowman now claims the tweet has been “deleted and [he] doesn’t know why”).

In the video which you can now see here courtesy of The Mirror, Barrowman hits out at the director M. Night Shyamalan and his latest film Old

Stating he watched the film for two hours and it was “sh**e” the actor who was paid a reported £600,000 for an appearance in the British reality series I’m A Celebrity proudly boasted he demanded a refund from the cinema as a result.

The cinema chain he watched it in is unknown but in the video, he posted to Twitter to his 500k followers that he was told refunds are only given out usually within the first 30 minutes.

But he emphatically with a smile announces he got a refund anyway.

Is John Barrowman right? Should cinemas offer a refund if you didn’t like the film?

Credit: Universal Pictures

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Social media and many in the industry hit out at Barrowman for being unprofessional and disingenuous to Shyamalan and the entire cast and crew of Old in his video for his comments.

Whilst critique of a film will never be unexpected, it is very rare for a performer of the industry to openly explicitly critique a theatrical film during its releases quite like Barrowman.

Further critique came from demanding a refund after watching a film for 2 hours.

Was he right to demand a refund?

Unbeknown to the general public, cinema chains often allow a refund if a customer isn’t enjoying the film, sort of an unwritten rule within the first 15-30 minutes.

However, this is always discretionary as at the end of the day you’ve chosen to see the film and the Cinema can hardly be held responsible if you don’t enjoy it.

This is completely different to a faulty product, or perhaps a screening of a movie that encounters audio or visual errors during the performance.

You wouldn’t expect a refund from purchasing a game you didn’t end up enjoying or a DVD.

Or would you?

Was John Barrowman right, or was he wrong?

We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

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