MOVIES THAT SUCK
BY DANNY GALLAGHER

"Cellular" OR  "Dial 'M' for Moron"

You're not just shelling out $9.50 a night out of the house and away from your soul-shattering life to see a movie in the theater. You're paying for a future memory.

Remember the first R-rated movie you and your friends got to see without being accompanied by a guardian and how the horrific, unflinching images scarred your psyche so bad that you slept with the lights on for a week? I know, I never thought "The Bridges of Madison County" could make a man feel so numb either.

Remember the first movie you saw with your parents that had a sex scene you didn't expect and how shocking it felt because you thought that "Rainbow Brite" was a family flick?

Remember the first movie you saw on a date and how you tried to hold her hand in the dark only to find out through her lawyer that wasn't her hand?

Sometimes the movies themselves make the memory. Case in point: "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith." I know it's not the smartest movvie series ever made, but I grew up watching the movies, so there's a special place for them in my heart. It's right next to the clogged ventricle brought on by years of swilling dollar beers and chasing them with cheese taquitos.

Due to a combination of bad timing, work schedules and a lack of money thanks to a drunken shopping spree at the local Movie Trading Company, I had to wait a month after the release date to see it. I wasn't disappointed I didn't get to see it the week it opened because there was a crowd of geeks who slept at the theater for a month. I saved $100 in dry cleaning bills to get the smell of wet wookie out of my clothes.

The first three-fourths were what I expected a spaceship blows up,, an overrated Natalie Portman hams up her dialogue, a Jedi fights off an entire army with nothing but a lightsaber, Yoda like a dyslexic drunk he speaks. The only part I really wanted to see was the very end when Anakin Skywalker stops acting like a whiny teenager from "The Wonder Years" and starts acting like Darth Friggin' Vader.

He has always been my favorite movie villain. He wears nothing but black, squeezes the life out of anyone he wants from across a room and speaks in a low, evil tone that makes him the Don Cornelius of the evil empire. Oh yeah, we're gonna get down and funky on the Rebellion tonight. 

When his familiar helmet snapped in place, I squished into my seat and a huge smile crawled across my face. Just as he was about to speak, the Emperor asked, "Lord Vader, can you hear me?" I waited feverishly in anticipation of hearing that haunting, evil voice again. Vader paused, then responded, "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

My head whipped around to the source of the disturbance and in the seat behind me sat a large lump of flesh talking on his cell phone. Not only did he have an annoying ringtone, but he also had the annoying nerve to carry on a conversation that lasted longer than, "No man, I'm watching 'Star Wars' right now." He couldn't be more annoying if the theater was screening an Ashton Kutcher movie on his big, fat forehead.

Cell phones are a pet peeve because having a short temper over things so meaningless makes it easier to write a column every week. But cell phones are one of the few annoyances I also have in my real life because they've ruined movie theaters for me more than crying babies, high-cholesterol imitation popcorn butter and easily confused elderly ever could.

Technology has made the cell phone even more of a nuisance because it's so small you can never tell the source of the noise and you can turn anything into a ringtone. If you have a reel-to-reel recording of the sounds your mother made as she was giving birth to you, a computer can make your phone scream "You did this to me you bastard!" when your buddy calls for a beer run. 

When you bring your little wired box of nerve killers into a theater in the full, upright, non-"Shut up" position, rest assured you are using the cell phone to the full annoyance effect. Not only can it create loud and annoying sounds, but no one will politely tell you to stick it where your doctor checks for hernias. It's nearly impossible to find them in a darkened theater unless you have the guts to actually answer it. This fat tub of suck had the guts, but I was full of it. Guts, that is.

I stood up and let the fold down seat flip up loud enough for it to be heard in the hallway. I did an about face, looked him right in the eyes and started screaming at him like a Robert Plant impersonator. I told him how his cell phone was distracting, not to mention downright rude and that he was one more "What up dawg?" from finding out what color his esophagus was.

Then some old lady sitting in front of me with her grandson turned around and told me in a sweet grandmotherly voice to "Shut my pie hole."

Apparently, she was trying to watch the movie too.