During the film, the most irritating sound was the clink of ice in real glasses. As it got close to curtain time, they took their food and drink into one of the adjoining six theater balconies, all with plush wide seats and small tables with sunken cup holders. Those who didn't want a whole dinner, or arrived too late for a sit-down meal, lined up at the special concession stand, where the menu included shrimp cocktail and sushi and half bottles of white zinfandel and pinot noir.

They paid $18 - twice the regular ticket price (though it included free popcorn and valet service) - and took an escalator upstairs to the bar and restaurant, where the monkfish was excellent and no one under 21 was allowed. Others, who had arrived early for their screening of, say, 'Wedding Crashers' or 'The Dukes of Hazzard' - their reserved-seat tickets, ordered online and printed out at home, in hand - entered through a separate door. Entering the capacious lobby, some of them dropped off their small children in a supervised playroom and proceeded to a vast concession stand for a quick meal of pizza or popcorn shrimp before the show. Moviegoers by the hundreds were keeping the valet parkers busy, pulling into the porte-cochere beneath the enormous chandelier-style lamps.

It was Saturday night at the Palace 20, a huge megaplex here designed in an ornate, Mediterranean style and suggesting the ambience of a Las Vegas hotel.

Mega plex movies