If there's one good thing that can be said for Wing Commander, it's that it's only an hour and twenty minutes long.

I must make my standard "Haven't Been There, Haven't Done That" Disclaimer on this movie. I've never played the Wing Commander video games, and odds are after seeing this movie, I never will.

That being said, I was expecting a very Starship Troopersesque experience from the whole thing. I was expecting crappy acting and a lousy story augmented with mind-blowing special effects combining in a magical and synergistic way that somehow bakes a deep dish pan of shit into a gleaming four tier wedding cake... made of shit.

It just didn't happen. There was no magic. There was no spark. There was no booty. There was just a bunch of guys who hated Pilgrims. Hey buddy, if it wasn't for Pilgrims you know how many days off from work you would get in November? Zero. Lay off the Pilgrims, man.

I mean, sure, I can appreciate a film like Citizen Kane but I really like to watch films like Independence Day. They'll never win best picture, but you don't come out of Saving Private Ryan yelling, "Earth Rules! Don't mess around with the Earth or we'll KICK YOUR SORRY ALIEN ASS!"

This movie was way too much like a video game. After about the first half hour I just wanted to grab my PC keyboard and hit ESC until I was back to Windows. It was kind of the same experience as reading the novelization of Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic video game. Even though it was very different from the game itself, it still felt like reading a transcript of somebody playing the game.

I could just imagine a couple of seventeen year old kids with greasy hair and X-files T-shirts a few rows behind me saying, "Dude Man! One time I tried to make the hyperspace jump through that same quasar in the game, but I couldn't do it so I had to keep reloading my saved game for like three days before I got it, but when I did then the Kilrathi battle cruiser was right there just like it is in the movie, except it didn't look so cool in the game because it was low-poly. That was the best prom night ever! This movie rules!"

But what of the science-fiction of the thing? Movies with good, or at least interesting sci-fi elements score a lot of big points with me. Even a stinkbomb of a movie like InnerSpace would still score a few chainsaws in my book for having interesting, though scientifically inaccurate, sci-fi elements.

Wing Commander had almost nothing interesting going on for it in that arena. You've got your big ships and your small ships, your good ships and your bad ships, your "Aye Captains" and your "Shields up, Captains," your "I hate Pilgrims" and your "Pass the cranberry sauce please", but nothing really unique or original.

I think my favorite piece of WC technology were the Rapier attack ships. They looked like WWII bomber planes mixed with X-Wing fighters and smashed all to hell. Very cool design. And the hot-dog piloting that Rosie and Stu pulled a few times in the movie were as close to the Will-Smith-punching-an-alien-right-in-the-face kind of action that I was hoping for.

I think perhaps the best thing about this movie is that it introduced me to Saffron Burrows, my favorite British person of the week. She seems to have a habit of starring in Face Movies that don't suck, and as such, if it hadn't been for Wing Commander I may have never been introduced to her.

The most amazing thing about this whole movie experience, however, had absolutely nothing to do with the movie at all.

On the short walk home from Burbank's Palm AMC theatre, my friends and I were waiting on a street corner for the light to change so that we could cross. As we are standing there, despondent and downtrodden from just coming out of Wing Commander, a carload of high school punks flew by in one of their mommy's cars and hurled a handful of eggs at us.

A dozen white shells of doom catapulted from the speeding vehicle toward our unsuspecting selves. Within seconds, we would be covered in sticky unborn chicken fetus, perhaps as a punishment for seeing Wing Commander and giving Hollywood the false impression that the youth of America actually want more of this kind of movie. It would be a horrible end to a lousy experience.

But they missed.

Exploding in yolky masses all around the sidewalk, eggshells ruptured and delivered their gooey yellow payloads amazingly off target.

Not only did the hooligans not score a single direct hit, but not even a tiny bit of breakfast protein polluted the heels of our collective shoes.

It was a complete drive-by egging failure.

God is not an angry, vengeful being, God is a sympathetic being that maintains a sense of justice in the world. You see Wing Commander, you don't need to be hit by flying eggs.

Whether or not what we experienced was an According to Hoyle miracle is irrelevant. What is relevant is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved.

If you're looking to see a good, quality sci-fi movie this weekend, steer clear of Wing Commander. However, if you are looking to give yourself a boost of good karma that can only be earned through enduring great suffering, then Wing Commander is the movie for you.