I’m often asked by friends and fellow students how I got the job doing movie reviews for the Daily.

They all think it sounds like a great job and want it for themselves. They think I must be the luckiest guy in the world, getting to go to the movies all the time.

But so far this semester, I haven’t felt all that lucky. Things started out great. The first two movies I saw each got a perfect five stars — “Titanic” and “Good Will Hunting.”

Since then, it has gone downhill. Nothing has scored above a 3 1/2 or the OK range.

That’s because January and February are the motion picture dumping grounds.

Movies not good enough to open in December, during the Oscar race, or big enough to open during the summer blockbuster season get unloaded in the first couple months of the year.

It’s the studio’s way of saying, “We know this is crap, but we paid for it, so we have to release it.”

Which brings me to “Senseless.” The movie stars Marlon Wayans, one of the 30 or 40 talented siblings of the Wayans family currently working in the entertainment industry.

Here he plays Daryl Witherspoon, a poor college student struggling through his senior year at Stanford. The movie costars David Spade as the sensitive, soft spoken friend who attempts to aid Daryl in his quest for success.

Gotcha! If you believed that line about Spade, you are so gullible.

Spade plays, of course, the smart-assed sarcastic jerk who attempts to keep Daryl from getting ahead. Both are economics students up for the coveted position of junior analyst at a New York financial company.

Normally, I find Spade extremely amusing. Here, he seemed a little too removed from the movie, like he was walking around thinking, “What the hell am I doing in this lame picture?”

“Senseless” starts out with a relatively interesting idea. Desperate for cash, Daryl signs up as a human guinea pig in an experimental drug study. The drug heightens the five human senses to super levels.

A unique concept handled in an unoriginal and routine way. It plays like a too-long sitcom.

The early scenes of the movie involve Daryl failing miserably in his attempts to get a girl, get into a fraternity and join the hockey team.

You don’t have to be a genius to know that after taking the drug, he’ll accomplish all three. Or that later, something will go wrong with the drug and screw everything up.

The best thing about this movie is Marlon Wayans. Wayans is very funny and possesses a real knack for physical comedy coupled with the ability to twist his face like it was made of rubber.

He’s got a future. I hope to see him someday in a movie worthy of his comedic talents.

I imagine that 12-year-olds will find “Senseless” absolutely hysterical. After all, it only takes a few fart-jokes to keep that crowd happy, and this movie has plenty.

One of the “funny” scenes, for example, involves Daryl listening to the sounds coming from a ladies room with his super hearing. Let’s just say he hears all the disgusting noises one would associate with the restroom.

And thanks to his super sense of smell, he is privy to all the resulting odors. My inner child might have been laughing, but I sure wasn’t.

If you like jokes about flatulence, masturbation, peeing, sperm banks, scrotum piercing and “advanced rectal irritation,” this is the movie for you.

But for those of you who have matured past the junior high level, seeing this movie would be “Senseless.”

2 stars out of five

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.