The English Patient killed me.

Let's put it this way. If, after three hours of watching a movie, you find yourself laughing hysterically while a lover holds his paramour in her death throws, then something went terribly wrong in said movie. Terribly wrong. Yeah, well, this was a terrible movie.

The whole, "I'm randomly attracted to a married person and I have to have them even though it will destroy my life, her life, and her husband's life" thing just doesn't tug at my heart strings. And Juliette Binoch's out-of-nowhere fling with the bomb detonator didn't really work for me, either. One moment, she doesn't give two straws about that guy, and the next thing you know she claims it's her destiny to marry him.

? (blink)

The "thesis" of the movie is a line from a poem, (oh please, let's not abuse poetry!), read by Juliette Binoche with particular relish: "the heart is a fiery organ."

Now, according to the producers of The English Patient, that means that people:

1) have no control over who they marry and thus are stuck in relationships they can never be happy in and therefore they must . . .

2) carry on affairs with others and claim to be perfectly happy with the dual arrangement, there are no complications at all until their spouse finds out, at which point they . . .

3) drive their spouse so insane that he foists them into a plane and they go flying across the desert in the attempt to smash into the offending Romeo so that they can all be dead together, but they . . .

4) fail miserably at this because they fail to smash into Romeo and only the angry husband dies, so the offending Juliette gets left in a cave, her lover runs to get help and fails miserably at this (incompetent moron) so she . . .

5) dies and then the offending Romeo hauls her into a plane and they crash. Ouch.

6) He dies from burn wounds and somehow this is all profoundly moving.

7) The end.

8) The wild eyed look in Colin Firth's eyes before he (almost) smashed into the offending Romeo was actually pretty good.

9) I burst out loud laughing when the offending Romeo finally died from his burn wounds. Looking at his face was like looking at a crazy-eyed, rotting peach.

Hilarious.

Okay, fans of The English Patient, defend this piece of sh*t.

And Mike Clark of USA Today steps up to the plate with his one line review:

"An aerobic workout for the tear ducts."

Poor, Mike. Poor, sorry, retarded Mike. Something tells me he wasn't being sarcastic :(

But he made me crack up again!

The English Patient, reviews, et al: so bad it's good.