Cursed Tongue Guide to Divining Movie Suckage

You really don’t need a Magic 8 Ball and Ouji board to contact Gene Siskel to predict movie suckage. All you need to separate the theatrical wheat from the schlock is this handy list of questions, and a movie trailer. Also, it probably helps if you already know that WWE Raw is make-believe.

Are the blurbs in the trailer:

• From magazines that don’t exist?
  
• From Wireless magazine?
• From KSUX Small Time Local Affiliate in Podunk, ID?
• One word? (The critic could have said “Fantastic flop,” which becomes “Fantastic!” in the hands of advertisers.)
• Invaded by ellipses?
• Punctuated with multiple exclamation points? (Serious news outlets frown on the use of any exclamation point, multiple points are for 12 year-old-girls and movie advertisers. If an Ebert quote contains an exclamation point, you can rest assured that advertisers inserted it.)

Does the movie trailer:

• Consist of a hypnotic jumble of flashing scenes that leave you feeling like you were just subliminally punked?
• Make as much sense as Tom Cruise being heterosexual?
• Contain interviews from the actors about how great the movie is?
• Contain interviews from people on the street, who obviously walked out of the theater dazed from viewing 90 minutes of a movie so horrible it amounts to emotional torture? (Movie night in Gitmo features classic Rob Schneider, or Pauly Shore flicks. Don’t tell me that kind of torture isn’t covered by the Geneva Convention.)
• Tout the film as “The best movie of the year,” and it is January?
• Tout the film as the “Most popular comedy/drama/PowerPoint presentation of the summer,” and it is May?
• Compare the movie to a good movie? (“It’s as magical as the Wizard of Oz.” And the film stars CG robotic cows.)
• Describe the film as Movie X meets Movie Y? (It’s Sound of Music meets The Godfather.)

General Questions:

• Does the movie contain a bizarre time warp plot and Keanu Reeves?
• Is the movie a sequel staring a rough-looking Stallone, who seems to insist on writing/directing movies until the Rocky and Rambo franchises rival the Police Academy movies for sequels?
• Is the movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and it’s not The Sixth Sense?
• Did the movie go direct to video?
• Is the title of the movie Snakes on a Plane?
• Is it a war movie with a chick in it? (Because according to The Phosgene Kid all war movies with chicks in them suck.)

If you answer yes to any of these questions the chances of movie suckage are 50%. Yes to two questions and the chances of suckage are 80%. Three or more yeses raise the odds of movie suckage to 99.9%.