Travelling 10 thousand miles just to catch a movie? Well, as a self-inflicted movie-phile, I can't resist checking out the local theatres of wherever I am. This is where Malaysia's greatest weakness truly comes alive.
The movie theaters are great - magnificent sound systems, huge screens, pots of sweet and salty popcorn, Coke containers the size of minor industrial silos. Red carpets muffle your footsteps, as you slip into the soft plush seats and eagerly await the comming of the dark.
Alas, the magic ends there. After a few minutes of any moderate movie, you're bound to notice the sudden jumps and shifts in the scenery, as well as the odd hick-ups developed by some of the characters. What's going on? The answer is - censorship. Movies in Malaysia fall victim to the cold steel of Malaysian Board of Censorship, which leaves no swearword uttered and no kiss exposed. Dialogue is mangled by blank-outs and cuts and even entire scenes are headlessly cut out of the movies. The net result is aggravation, altough the main argument for the censorship is removal of bad influence from the material. Funny enough, the free-flowing violence of modern movies is left mostly untouched.
Luckily, you can always take the long way home and slip by Petaling Street nightmarket for a 5 RM pirate Video CD of the movie to fill in the blanks on your home video system.
But it just isn't the same.