Hey, guys, always marry a movie fan

Let me tell you how lucky I am. There we were on Saturday, sitting in Seattle’s Neptune theater watching the chick-flick comedy “Spring Breakdown,” when everything about my Seattle International Film Festival experience changed.

Here’s what happened: We were a half hour into the film, a limply directed effort that stars three moderately talented actresses, Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and Parker Posey, when my wife turned to me.

“Are you enjoying this?” she asked.

What was to enjoy? Poehler, Dratch and Posey play friends who, when they graduated from college in 1992, were campus nerds (we know that because their entry in the campus talent contest was an unfashionably virginal cover of Cyndi Lauper’s song “True Colors”). These 17 years later they’re still losers, hungry to get their lives started.

So when one of them, Posey’s character, is assigned by her boss ( Jane Lynch ) to spend spring break on Texas’ South Padre Island , they jump at it. And comedy mayhem – uh – ensues?

Trouble is the comedy is a tad too obvious. It’s typical fish-out-of-water, life’s-lessons-learned stuff, with each of the characters having to face their respective essential issues. And while the three leads are competent – if overshadowed by Lynch’s outlandish Sarah Palin-type U.S. senator – the direction is average at best. And the jokes are, as I’ve said, obvious.

But I can’t really judge the whole film. It might have ended up being the best comedy ever written. Because after answering my wife this way – “Well, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be” – she whispered, “I think we should go and check out ‘Tyson.’ ”

“Tyson,” I should explain, is a James Toback-directed documentary about the former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson . It was playing around the corner at the Varsity theater.

I looked at my watch. It was 4:55. “Tyson” began at 5.

And that’s how we ended up leaving the Neptune, making the three-minute walk to the Varsity and sitting down just in time to catch 90 minutes of one of the most dominant heavyweight champions in history explaining the whys and wherefores of his troubled life.

From lame Hollywood product to scintillating sociological study. And all because of my wife.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I’m a lucky man.

Below: Trailer for the documentary “Tyson.”