Films are mixed for cinemas where dialogue sits in a dedicated centre speaker. Televisions and soundbars fold that mix down to two channels, so speech competes with music and effects that had their own space. Naturalistic performance styles and heavy dynamic range make the compression worse.
The centre channel is where the words live
A cinema mix puts almost all dialogue in a dedicated centre speaker, physically separate from the music and effects in the left, right and surround channels. Nothing masks the words because nothing else is coming from the same place.
Most home setups have no centre channel. Televisions and stereo soundbars fold a five- or seven-channel mix down to two, which mathematically sums the dialogue in with everything else. A gunshot and a whispered line that were separate in the cinema arrive from the same driver, and the loud thing wins.
Performance and dynamics compound it
Two other trends make the fold-down worse. Naturalistic delivery, where actors speak at conversational or lower volume rather than projecting, gives the mix less signal to work with. And modern mixes use very wide dynamic range, so the gap between the quietest line and the loudest effect is enormous by design.
In a treated cinema that range is an asset. In a room with a fridge, traffic and a television speaker firing downwards into a cabinet, it means the quiet end falls below the noise floor while the loud end is uncomfortably loud.
What actually helps, in order
Turn on subtitles. It is the single most effective fix, it costs nothing, and a large share of viewers under forty now use them by default. There is no craft argument against it.
After that: enable any dialogue, speech or night mode your television or soundbar has, since these compress dynamic range and raise the centre content; switch the audio track from a surround option to a stereo one, because the stereo mix is often prepared for exactly this situation; and if you own a soundbar, check whether it is set to a music or sport preset rather than a movie one.
Recommended viewing
Sources and further reading
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FAQs about Why Is Dialogue So Hard to Hear in Movies?
Are subtitles cheating?
No, and the framing is worth dropping. Subtitles were designed for exactly this: a mix optimised for a room you are not in. A large proportion of viewers under forty use them by default, and there is no version of the argument where reading a line you cannot hear is worse than missing it.
Would a soundbar fix it?
A soundbar with a genuine centre channel helps considerably; a two-channel one may not, because it faces the same fold-down problem as the television. If you buy one for this reason specifically, the centre channel is the feature to check for, not the number of virtual surround modes.
Why does older cinema not have this problem?
Monaural and early stereo mixes had almost no dynamic range to spend, so dialogue had to sit high enough to survive a single cinema speaker, and delivery styles were far more projected. A 1950s film gives you nowhere to hide a line, which is why it reads clearly on a phone.