Most of the movies shown in Latin America are from the U.S., released to the region a bit later than up north. But the beauty of it -- especially to someone who is interested in learning Spanish and will take almost any measures to learn more of the language -- is while the majority of the movies are in English, there are subtitles in Spanish. It’s really quite helpful. You can learn a lot of vocabulary, idioms, colloquialisms … and swear words.
Most of the movie theaters I’ve been to in Latin America have been very similar, if not equal, to the ones in the U.S.: big mega-plexes in malls, selling junkfood and showing the most popular movies. But tickets are considerably cheaper and so is the junkfood. Popcorn is still the snack of choice, but it comes with fun Spanish names like palomitos and poporopos (one of my favorite Spanish words ever; it's from Guatemala).
One of the interesting “cultural lessons” you may learn by going to a movie in another country is that movie-going etiquette is different than at home. Granted, people in the U.S. seem to get ruder and ruder all the time, not caring that the bright light from their smart phone is annoying, kicking the seat in front of them, whispering loudly to their date who doesn’t understand the plot, etc. But that is the norm in Latin America, and it's not considered rude. People talk to each other. They talk on the phone. Detailed conversations take place during the entire movie. They’re social, even in the darkness of a theater. But when you’ve only paid a couple bucks to see a movie, you just deal with it. It’s like a movie party!
Another lesson: humor is cultural and doesn’t always translate. I remember going to see Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls in Panama City back in the day (the Spanish title was El Loco En Africa). Keep in mind that those in the audience who didn’t speak English were getting most of the story from reading subtitles and from Jim Carrey's facial acrobatics. I laughed and laughed while all the Panamanians sat there in silence, evidently wondering what the hell was so funny. Maybe they were too busy reading to notice Carrey's face, I don't know. (Or maybe that is a bad example. I guess that could’ve happened in the U.S., too … but wasn’t Ace quite popular?).
A few years after that, I was in Guanajuato, Mexico, a marvelous little city that is also a college town. The university was having a foreign film festival and there were movies showing all the time. Some were in English with Spanish subtitles, but when I really felt like being challenged, I went to those in an entirely different language with Spanish subtitles, or one that was just in Spanish with no subtitles of any kind. Again, it was a really good exercise in language acquisition. I may not have absorbed everything going on in the movies, but for a few pesos, it didn’t matter.
I went to the same theater one night after the festival, accompanied by two Danish women I met at the guesthouse. American Pie was showing, and I was thinking that there was no way this humor was going to translate; it was going to be Ace Ventura all over again, I was sure of it. But I was wrong. The crowd was mostly Mexican college students and they were roaring with laughter. At all the right moments. I’m sure they, as well as the Danish women I was with, left the theater thinking that the movie truthfully and accurately depicted high school life in the United States.
I know that when you are planning a trip to a new land, the last thing you are thinking is “Gee, I hope I can go see some Hollywood movies while I’m there trying to immerse myself in the culture.” But if you like movies at home, don’t feel it isn’t “authentic enough” for your travels to go to a theater and eat popcorn. It can help you learn some choice phrases in your new language, it can show you another facet of life in a new country, and it can give you an opportunity to witness another way you differ from those in another culture (i.e., you may have your own Ace Ventura moment).
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