See it? That tiny little piece of text right under the “E” of Movie? Yeah…what the hell?

The other night, Sara picked up The Simpsons Movie DVD at Target. Once she got home, she settled in on our couch and I picked up the DVD case and walked over to the DVD player. Then, I stopped. In tiny print on the cover of the DVD were the words “Full-screen.” Excuse me?!

I twirled around and held the DVD out to Sara accusingly.

“I’m not watching this. Why did you get the Full-screen version?”

“Shit. I didn’t see that. I just grabbed it. I figured it was the Wide-screen version. I just assumed it was Wide-screen.”

Some unsavory cussing later, I was out the door, DVD and receipt in hand. When I got to Target, I bolted to the Entertainment section, saw the big display end-cap for The Simpsons Movie and scanned the DVD cases. Out of eight rows of DVDs, only one held Wide-screen copies of the movie.

WTF?

In an age where more people are picking up HD TVs every day, where VCRs are obsolete, who the hell buys Full-screen DVDs? Why are there seven rows of Full-screen DVDs and only one of Wide-screen? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Who are these people that walk up to that end-cap display, see Full-screen and decide “that’s for me?” Are there still people out there that find Full-screen copies of movies to be superior to Wide-screen? Where are all of these lovers of pan-and-scan?

I took these two copies of The Simpons Movie to the return counter and explained my problem. I needed to make an exchange. The gal looked at me like I was out of my mind.

“Aren’t those the same movie?”

“Are they?”

She picked them both up, eyeing me cautiously.

“Oh shit…sorry…there it is. ‘Full-screen.’ That type is so small, is that the only- wow, that is the only place it mentions it on the front. That’s weird.”

“It certainly is. I need to exchange that one for the Wide-screen copy.”

“Sure, sure. Y’know, I didn’t even know that they made movies in Full-screen anymore.”

“You have seven rows of this movie in Full-screen in the back.”

“Really? That’s crazy. Why the hell would we have that many?”

“Beats me.”

See, even the people who work there are stunned by this discovery.

I remember having a discussion with my mother almost ten years ago at a video store back home. I had grabbed the “letterboxed” VHS of some movie or another and she asked me to get the “regular” version. I tried to explain to her that on the letterboxed version, you get to see the movie like you do in the theater. Her response was thus,

“But, it doesn’t fill up the screen. There’s black bars at the top and the bottom. You don’t get to see the whole movie.”

A quick explanation later, she realized how stupid that statement was.

Maybe someone needs to explain that to everyone else. Then I won’t have to run back to Target at 9pm in the rain and exchange the disgraced copy of The Simpsons Movie for the real version.