I've been reading lots about the "high-minded" debate in the Senate about campaign finance reform. I don't know where anyone gets the idea that our esteemed senators are acting in any way other than pure self-interest. All I've seen are, among other bizarre things, a proposal to increase the personal giving limits in races with an independently wealthy candidate and another proposal that would limit the amount that newspapers, TV and radio stations could charge for political ads.

Um, not to be rude, but all that smells like the rich getting richer. The debate is already in the gutter and in any case, Bush won't sign any real reform. The issue is already moot. Get out of my face.

In the spirit of timeliness, however, I'd like to talk about another industry that sorely need reforming: Movies.

In short, they suck. Ninety-nine percent of the movies made (that's major and minor, big studio and independent, A, B and C) are dreadful. Now, some dreadful movies do have their moments. In the otherwise awful flick Moving, Richard Pryor gets fired. He's been waiting for this moment his whole life. He gives his boss the bird. Except his hand misfires. He shoots up his index finger instead of the middle one.

That's not the funny part. The funny part comes in the next scene, where Pryor incessantly practices the finger-giving art, bemoaning his "misfire" at the most inopportune time.

The other 89 minutes? They blew. Big hairy chunks.

A lot of movies are like that. They have one good idea, and then they try to graft a movie around that singular thought.

Thus my first rule of movie reform: All movies must have at least three story lines.

Good ones have even more than that. Remember The Usual Suspects? Here's a movie with a singular frame tale, but with more than five intersecting stories. Blood, explosions, double-crosses, Benecio del Toro and Kevin Spacey. Brilliant. Even a simple movie like Stripes had three (count 'em) three story lines: Basic training, deployment to Germany and the final rescue. Three distinct story lines is the bare minimum for any movie.

My second rule: There must be at least one good actor (I use that word in its proper, non-gender specific role) or one astonishing piece of eye candy (again, being used in a non-gender specific way) in every movie.

The first part of that rule is self-explanatory. The best example of the second part is Flashdance, quite possibly one of the worst movies ever made. However, it has two things going for it. First, there is the quasi-feminist story line: Steel worker strips her nights away to chase her dream of being a ballet dancer. Like I said, quasi-feminist. But make that steel worker Jennifer Beals, and--boom! You've got yourself a good movie. Doesn't matter if she actually does any of the dancing or not. Jolly good show.

I had a friend (female) in school who saw every Jean-Claude Van Damme movie for the same reason. She thought the plots were dumb and the fighting only so-so, but Jean-Claude apparently (I've never seen one of his movies, I'm afraid) doesn't wear many clothes while he kicks butt. 'Nuff sed.

My third, and perhaps the most important reform: Be upfront about the audience for the film in question.

I rarely get myself into trouble with this anymore, because there are so many reviews available on the web that it's hard to think a movie is one thing when it's not. Still, the problem does come up every now and then, particularly at the video store. Years ago, I remember seeing trailers for the movie Class. It came out some time in the early 80s, I guess. Jacqueline Bissett, Rob Lowe and Anthony Edwards (I think). Anyway, the trailers for the thing made it out to be this madcap comedy: Guy screws his roommate's mom and everyone has a gay old time. Turns out the movie is a really dark drama. It's not a very good movie, but it's definitely not funny.

A much more recent example (on the video side) is the movie Fever Pitch which is (very loosely) based on Nick Hornby's football (soccer) pseudo-memoir. It's a nice, simple romantic comedy about a guy in love with football (and the girl) and a girl in love with the guy (and definitely not with football). The cover of the video features the female lead (whose name I don't recall) standing naked in front of the male lead (Colin Firth) holding a pair of boots in front of her breasts. This makes the movie appear to be some sort of slapstick yukfest. It's not. It is pretty good. Low production values, but well worth a rental.

I'm not going to get into such sensitive issues as writing quality and what makes a movie funny as opposed to stupid. That's like asking five economists whether or no we're in a recession. If movie studios would follow just those three suggestions (and, to be fair, #2 is pretty well boilerplate already, though it always astonishes me when some big-time exec forgets about it), movies would be 100 percent better. Okay, so then 98 percent of movies would still suck. That would be a big improvement.

Jon Worley believes these three movies should never have been made for violations of the above code: A Night at the Roxbury (and most any other SNL-clone movie, all for violations of rule #1), The Flintstones: Viva Rock Vegas (for violation of Rule #2, even though it could be argued that Jane Krakowski is a passable actress) and Best Defense (for violation of rule #3: Extensive use of Eddie Murphy in the trailers when he spent about ten minutes onscreen during the movie).