The Shuffle: Netflix gets it right

While “Spirited” isn’t a great movie, especially compared to Ferrell’s Christmas classic “Elf,” it’s one that I could see playing well with a crowd. It’s a shame the movie won’t get the chance to do that.

This has been a problem I’ve had with exclusive streaming movies since critics were granted a sole theatrical showing of Eddie Murphy’s Rudy Ray Moore biopic “Dolemite Is My Name.” Its jokes were heightened by laughing along with others in a theater. At home, it didn’t have quite the same feeling.

My secret theory is it’s a plan to peel people away from theaters altogether as an act of revenge. For years, theaters like AMC and Regal refused to play any movie that premiered on the same day as a streaming platform. When the pandemic hit, they made concessions with companies like Warner Bros. Pictures. Still, their beef with streamers like Netflix persisted.

That will change on Thanksgiving weekend as a week-long theatrical run is granted to the comedy-mystery “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” The sequel to the hit Rian Johnson movie, it’s another very silly, twisty whodunit for detective Benoit Blanc, played again by Daniel Craig.

Having seen a preview screening of “Glass Onion,” with a review coming in next week’s St. Joe Live (which, I should also note, will be coming out in a Wednesday edition of the St. Joseph News-Press), watching it with other people made all the difference. The laughs were louder, gasps were stronger and oddly topical jokes hit with more of a zing.

Like many Netflix movies, this is a film that deserves to be shown in a theater, and people who have been waiting to see it should get that satisfaction. For everyone else, whether they can’t make it, are over going to the cinema or are willing to wait, they’ll get it on Dec. 23 on Netflix.

I’m hoping audiences will show up and prove that they want to see some streaming movies with a crowd. Hopefully, it can lead to more movies like “Glass Onion,” “Dolemite Is My Name” and, heck, even overly long Christmas movies like “Spirited” going to theaters first and streamers later.

In the words of Nicole Kidman’s AMC Theatres pre-roll ad: The theater makes movies better.