By DANNY GALLAGHER

"We had just got to the restaurant when you called and we went to a movie afterwards. We saw 'The Bourne Supremacy.' And before you ask, no, it didn't suck, as a matter of fact it was awesome."

That was an email from a friend of mine. He and his wife spent a night on the town, grabbed a quick dinner and jumped into the nearest movie theater for reasons I don't want to even begin to know about.

That's not what's bugging me though, even if it's taking its sweet time to get out of my brain. He said, "before you ask, no, it didn't suck" as if the first thing that flies out of my mouth when I see him again is, "So, did 'The Bourne Supremacy' suck harder than a dumb guy trying to eat brussell sprouts with a straw or what?"

My problem is have I become this cynical a-hole who just hates every movie that comes out every week? Have I become what I always feared I'd become - predictable?

I know being the creator and writer of a column called "Movies that Suck" doesn't help curb this stereotype. People hear the name and an image pops into their mind of a mutant Roger Ebert with two thumbs sewn into the bottom of his fist, so he can trash every movie that comes out twice as fast as the normal critic.

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. Meaner. Ruder. Surlier.

MUTANT ROGER EBERT: "...and that's why, ladies and gentlemen, the makers of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy should be tied to a tree and shot with high calibur elephant guns at point blank range. I haven't seen a movie this bad since Dennis Rodman got his own movie, and I've never even seen the 'Lord of the Rings' yet."

I happen to have a great love for movies, which is probably why I hate so many of them. I'll admit the majority of films that get released on a national level aren't worth screening to all the tortured souls in the bowels of Hell unless they're inhabited by movie executives, which is highly likely and more of a fitting eternal punishment than any Tabasco sauce enema they might ever receive.

But I don't hate every single movie in the entire world. There are some movies I have fallen in love with that would make others question my brain functions. I won't tell you which ones because some of them are more embarrassing than showing up your nephew's baptism in a homemade Wonder Woman costume. But, like all of our favorite films, they have personal connections and quirks that make them special and entertaining to one person and sheer emotional and physical torture to another.

Nothing is certain when it comes to movies. A trailer could paint a movie as if it's biggest piece of cinematic gold you'll ever seen and when you watch it on the day it opens, you feel more ripped off than a 110 pounds Atkins dieter with a blood pressure rate that's higher than Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown at Darryl Strawberry's house.

In fact, that's part of the fun of going to the movies - risking $7.50 on a ticket for a movie that could be the great cinematic masterpiece you've ever seen or a movie that'll head to .99 cent rack at Blockbuster faster than any of Dolph Lundgren films.

But it's an undisputed fact there are some flicks a person with at least one functioning brain lobe can tell are going to suck without having to actually see them. And after years of tireless research, here's a full-proof test I've devised to tell if a movie is going to suck without having to actually see it. Keep it on your person at all times. You never know when you might need in case of an emergency.

¥ If the trailer claims it's "based on the true life story of the guy who played Screech from "Saved by the Bell," then it sucks.

¥ If the critic quoted in the advertisement proclaims, "It's a tour de force, it had me on the edge of my seat until the very end, uhhhhhhhh...brains...," then it sucks.

¥ If it poses the question, "What if Jimi Hendrix joined forces with Toby Keith?", then it sucks.

¥ If it features Tom Arnold and he does not get shot, stabbed or beaten over the head during the course of the trailer, then it sucks.

¥ If the tagline reads "From the filmmakers that brought you the home video of the dad getting hit in the nuts with a whiffleball on 'America's Funniest Home Videos,'" then it sucks.

¥ If the only good thing you could say about seeing the movie is, "Well, we MIGHT get to see Halle Berry's boobies...again," then it sucks.

¥ If the trailer features Britney Spears and she actually sings, then it sucks.

¥ If you run into the theater, rip the poster off the wall, start tearing it up into tiny pieces, set it on fire and urinate on the ashes and no one tries to stop you, then it sucks.

¥ If it stars Rush Limbaugh as an aspiring belly dancer, then it sucks.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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