Bringing Freehold AMC Loews into the 21st Century

Freehold Raceway Mall is definitely succeeding as a fashion center, but is it slacking as an entertainment center? The mall has no dearth of good restaurants or fun events, but its main entertainment destination is sorely lacking: the .

There is advertising, and there is just plain taunting. Lately AMC theaters have begun to air commercials for their swanky new dine-in theaters before every movie (the closest to us is at Menlo Park Mall, so these aren’t just for big cities, either.) Those theaters look awesome, but I can only feel my wounds have been salted when I see an ad for one from my cramped, gum-encrusted seat in the Freehold theater. 

Not only is the Freehold Metroplex not one of these newly revamped locations, but it has not been renovated in about fifteen years, by my calculations. When the new wing of theaters was added, the first movie I saw there was 1996’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it is 2011 now. The original theaters, like 1-6, have remained the same since even earlier. 

Now, oldness is not something I intrinsically scorn, but some crucial shifts in movie theater design have occurred in the past decade or so. Firstly, the advent of stadium seating; most theaters are now set up this way, but at ole Freehold you’re still likely to wind up with the screen obscured by the big head of the person in front of you. 

Then there are the seats themselves, which nowadays tend to be roomier and more comfortable (with dwindling ticket sales, it behooves theaters to make more quality than quantity of seats to draw audiences away from their Netflix). Freehold still has cramped cloth seats that I can only be glad are shrouded in darkness, because fifteen-plus years of grime on cloth cannot be a pretty thing. Leather seats may be too expensive to ask for, but I think the investment worthwhile when you consider the longevity.

General upkeep goes for the Multiplex at large as well. From the seats to the carpets to the bathrooms, the issue is not oldness but lack of care. The carpets are stained, the floors are sticky, the bathrooms are dimly lit and uninviting. The second snack bar past the ticket-takers on the right wing has been abandoned for as long as I can remember; the last time I saw it in use may have been at that showing of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and its gutted corpse only serves to make the theater look decrepit and run-down. 

What Freehold AMC Loews needs most of all is some spring (or autumn) cleaning to spruce up the joint. I would much prefer a full renovation, if not to one of these new dine-in theaters then at least to something on par with close competitors like Monmouth Mall. Especially with so many options to watch movies in the comfort of your own home, people need to be wooed to the theater, and Freehold AMC Loews needs to try harder.