Okay, here's the deal. I am forced to beg you good people's forgiveness. I humbly do so now. I broke several of my cardinal rules, and I broke one of the Cardinal Rules of Moviegoing. It would be easy to claim temporary insanity, but I will not. Suffice it to say that I have already done my time in purgatory, and I've paid dearly for my sin.

See, the other night, I was gonna cut out of the office early to catch the "Ultimate Fighting Championship" on pay-per-view. Already had the Cherry Coke frostin' in the fridge, and three Slim Jims sat out on the coffee table, rarin' to go. Well, I'm gathering my stuff together, and my nurse, Martha Nell Burch, buzzes on the intercom to tell me I've got an important phone call. (Cardinal Rule Number Three -- Never take a so-called "important phone call" if you're about to go somewhere else. You'll regret it.) I grabbed the phone. My fishing buddy Claude Robicheaux needed a favor.

Seems this girl Claude has been trying to cozy up to finally agreed to go out with him, on the condition that he find a date for her best friend. After about ten minutes of harping and carrying on, I agreed to meet him at the movie theater. (Cardinal Rule Number Seven: Blind Date equals Death.) I went by the house, set a tape for the UFC match, and headed to the Dodecaplex.

The girl I was to escort for the evening, a Miss Lolly Starbright, turned out to be a dancer from Tad's Topless Truckstop off the interstate, so at least I'd have something to look at (but doggone it, I forgot to bring something to read). Then, in a blind fit of hormones, I broke the Cardinal Rule of Moviegoing that I hold dearest. I gave up my say in the decision-making process as to what movie we would see. The girls chose.

And, that, friends and neighbors, is how I wound up sitting through The English Patient, Oscar nominee, and my purgatory for the evening.

I know, I know. "But, Dr. Daniel! All these critics say it's one of the best movies of the year! It got nominated for a Best Picture Oscar!" Well, folks, who you gonna believe, that goof on "The Today Show" or me?

I will grant this. Visually, the movie is remarkable at times. The desert has never looked prettier. There is more texture in the camerawork than in five area rugs. We're treated to a wonderful Discovery Channel documentary, then they put a story into the mix and foul up the works.

Ralph Fiennes stars as the title character, and our introduction to him is shortly after he's been turned into a plate of raw cube steak by an exploding plane. The road company from Ishtar find him, wrap him up, and get him to an army hospital. A nurse, played by Juliette Binoche, takes pity on him, and removes him from the medical caravan that is bouncing him painfully over the roads of war-torn Europe, stashing him in an abandoned monastery, where she will nurse him until his inevitable death. Nobody knows anything about this patient, and he can't remember anything about himself, supposedly.

Slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, (imagine a sloth in pine tar) the filmmakers tell us how and why this patient ended up in his sorry state. The story involves an odd love triangle, a mysterious cavern that gets discovered, an adulterous affair, and wartime espionage. I would love to tell you more about the plot, and how it goes, but, to be quite honest, you're getting exactly what I got out of it.

This movie has some above-par acting, especially from Binoche, as a nurse who fights her own personal demons while tending the title character's assorted pains and stains. She, unfortunately, is the only character in this entire movie that gives us someone to care about. Everyone else, including Ralph Fiennes, shows various degrees of despicability. It's so easy to despise these people, one could hardly be compelled to like them when they end up stumbling into bed with each other. His love interest, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, is quite possibly the most wooden actor to grace our screens since Charlie McCarthy. Her emotional range, from passion to anger to sorrow, is portrayed by blinking her eyes at various speeds and turning her head like a dog hearing a funky high note.

I have no doubt that director Anthony Minghella knows how to set a scene. There are moments of pure genius in this movie, but they are tucked into long stretches of moody exposition and mindless travelogue footage. It's not often that I have to fight the urge to sleep in a movie theater. Usually, the movie is so good I'm engrossed in it, or it's so bad that I stay angry through it. This was neither. This was just a huge truck stuck in first gear, climbing one hell of a steep hill. It plods higher and higher, every now and then getting up a good head of steam, and then bogging down under its own weight.

One can only sit back and watch it rake in the Oscars. Remember Chariots of Fire? Remember Ghandi? Remember The Last Emperor?

Women will get this film more than men, I admit. The tragic love idea hits a heartstring in women that stays well-hidden in the average male. Not too many men can be found roaming the Harlequin Romance section of a bookstore. The baseball strike of '94 was the biggest tragedy most of us guys have ever been through.

Ladies of the world, unite! Y'all go see The English Patient together. Take your hankies and heartstrings and perfumey things. Leave the men to go grab a burger at Hooters. Let it be a trade-off. I only hope you understand this thing more than I did. Just my opinion, but, to me, The English Patient should have been left in the desert a long time ago.