The Oscar nominees have been announced, and if you're like me, you're very excited!

...Because you saw one of them. For me, it was "Tinker, Someone, Someone, Someone" — really hard to tell them apart. Basically, a middle-aged British guy betrays another middle-aged British guy, and some other middle-aged British guys try to figure out who, how and why, while I spent the whole time trying to figure out which guy was which. In my ideal movie, spy flick or not, all the characters would be wearing name tags. "HELLO, my name is Ivan, the love interest." Or "HELLO, I am Glenn Close, playing a man." Or at the very least, one character would wear an orange suit, another plaid, another chain mail, etc. (Yes, even if it's a beach movie.) And they aren't ever allowed to change costumes or — this should go without saying — genders.

So maybe I'm not the ideal audience for much beyond "Puss in Boots." ("HELLO, I am an animated character voiced by Antonio Banderas, and yes, I am still married to Melanie Griffith. I know this makes you shake your head.")

But surprisingly, I'm not the only one who finds it harder and harder to embrace the moviegoing experience. One cheap, easily befuddled American does not a drove make, yet it is in droves that people are staying away from movie theaters these days. This past year, movie attendance was down 4.5 percent. Summer movie attendance — the sweet spot of silly cinema — was at its lowest level since 1997. Put in ticket terms, Americans were buying 50 million fewer tickets in 2011 than they did in 2010. Of course, the economy is terrible, and only 1 in 37 people have what we used to call a "job" (a thing you go to and make a living), but 50 million fewer moviegoers traipsing by the highway robbery, er, concession stand? At this rate, the Jujubes are going to get harder than buckshot. What has happened to our can-do, off-to-the-quadriplex spirit?

Venerable Chicago movie critic Roger Ebert has announced that the problem is the theaters themselves. Charmless cinemas brimming with $1-a-kernel popcorn and unsilenced cellphones don't tempt us to the mall. He also blames unaffordable ticket prices, which might not be so bad if a medium Coke didn't set you back the price of a cab to the airport. And I actually think he forgot to add that the movie's starting time is now generally T minus 28 minutes of commercials, including previews of movies that you emphatically do NOT want to see or, worse, do — except that now you already have seen every joke, explosion and poignant moment. "The ambitious young man becomes a newspaper mogul, has affairs, loses his soul, and always thinks back about his sled. You know, the one he had as a kid. It says 'Rosebud' on it — R-O-S-E-B-U-D. It's a brand of sled. We're not telling you anything you couldn't have guessed, are we?"

So at home we stay, ordering up a movie from Netflix, burrowing into our Snuggie and eating 30 cents' worth of popcorn (or, alternatively, a "concession-size" box of buckshot). And if we can't figure out who's who or what's going on, it really doesn't matter, because once we're snug in our Snuggie, generally, we're asleep.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy ([email protected]) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.