Classic before-and-after tale of a company's glory days under the founders before corporate egos come in and drive it into the ground. MoviePass, MovieCrash concerns the ill-fated MP subscription service that allowed members to attend multiple screenings for a flat monthly fee. Kind of like the Netflix formula, but for actual theatergoers.
In this case glory days is relative since the business model was not sustainable to begin with. The founders seem indifferent to having lost 'only' a few $100K per month when compared to the $30Mil burn rate of their hedge fund-backed successors, but to me that almost misses the point. Yes one was embarrassing while the other was downright absurd, but neither was poised for success. After all, the concept of all-you-can-eat should be used as a temporary bridge rather than a long-term plan, and any company whose survival relies on users NOT taking advantage of why they signed up is doomed no matter who's at the helm- be it the charming founders, the greedy businessmen or any of their acolytes. In hindsight the blame game appears even more trivial given that MoviePass went bankrupt in January 2020; would the pandemic not have wiped them out regardless?
I would have been ok had the filmmakers left it there, but they do favor one side over the other (you can guess which one) and romanticize their journey as they prepare for a re-launch today. So it could be worth your time to see how persuasively that argument is made. Otherwise I'd just lump MoviePass in with all the other victims of streaming (there've been too many) and this film as one long commercial for what they plan to do next. I do hope they make it because I still treasure going out to the movies, but I doubt I'd go for this one.
