Moana 2 star Dwayne Johnson has advocated strange behaviour in public again, and we had some thoughts. Here’s when it’s okay to sing in the cinema…
Since Wicked arrived in cinemas over the weekend, the more conspicuously uncool sections of the internet have been alive with a very grown-up debate: is it okay to sing along in the cinema? With Moana 2 hitting multiplexes this week, the question could hardly be more urgent.
Thankfully, Moana 2 star Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has pitched in with his take. “Sing! You’ve paid your hard earned money for a ticket, and you’ve gone into a musical, and you’re into it,” he told BBC News last night. “Especially if you love music, that’s the fun part.”
The problem with taking social mores from a man who’s confessed to urinating in bottles in the workplace is he might not (and I’m speculating here) have the most well-rounded view of what behaviours are and aren’t socially acceptable. Forgetting the cinema for a second – in what situations is it okay to sing in public? A crazed supervillain-esque hostage situation? Your own Royal Variety performance?
As a card carrying member of the fun police, I’d also hope that anyone singing along to Moana 2 in the cinema did not, with all due respect, pay for their own ticket. At least if they are of an age to know a little better.
Read more: Wicked review | A spellbinding musical adaptation
It’s also important to recognise that, if an adult human needs to sing along to a new family musical, to the detriment of every other person within a cinema-screen’s radius, in order to get what they want out of the experience… well, with due respect, the rest of the audience didn’t pay to hear them.
Of course, this isn’t a problem unique to musicals. Talking, picture-taking, toenail-clipping and the multitude of other inconveniences film people love to get in a twist over all (anecdotally) seem to be on the rise. At a certain point, we might have to stop putting it all down to a post-lockdown ‘we’re not used to being in public’ malaise and recognise it as the character flaw that it is (I am not entirely exaggerating).
Obviously, there’s a time and place for a sing song, yada yada etc. We’ve got sing-along screenings, dog-friendly screenings, relaxed screenings, screenings to cater to your every whim, and let everyone enjoy cinema in their own way. At the same time, unless the entire cinema is happily screeching along to Defying Gravity, no matter what Dwayne Johnson says, loudly joining in should not be an option.
The timing of the question could hardly be more apt. One of the biggest studio projects of the year literally revolved around the idea that singing in public is a symptom of supervillain-level insanity. Unfortunately, the film was Joker: Folie a Deux – and not that many people saw it. Maybe we should have seen this coming…
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