WHAT'S NOT to like about a mega-million dollar, three-dimensional, outer-space music video starring Michael Jackson, directed by Francis Coppola, sponsored by Eastman-Kodak, and being shown, constantly, from here to eternity, in the Imagination Pavillion at EPCOT Center in beautiful Lake Buena Vista, Florida?

A Crimson press said, ineffable charm, five minutes on the telephone, and an ungodly amount of good fortune landed me and my best girl two complimentary passes to EPCOT, and consequently, Captain EO, that aforementioned multi-media minotaur with the legs of Thriller and the horns of Daddy Zoetrope.

I have to admit it ... I went into the experience with my Cynic Ray set to stun. I had visions of Michael Jackson teaching HAL the computer to moonwalk, Coppola making a cameo appearance as Jabba the Hut belching 3-D jelly donuts, all to the tune of "Billy Jean," with brand new Eastman-Kodak lyrics:

Eastman-K.,

That's our comp'ny,

And Michael J.,

Foots it f-f-fun-ky--

So don't buy Fuji film...

Et Cetera.

But when I took my seat in the packed theater, after having endured a ten minute Kodak slideshow featuring lots of pictures of ice crystallizing, and dogs, and beaches, and sunsets, and black holes, and umbrellas, and kite-flying, and gap-teethed kids gobbling psychedelic spools of never-eat-anything-bigger-than-yer-head cotton candy, my heart was going pitter-pat. It really was. I, err, looked forward to this thing, this piece of space-detritus with more zeros at the end of its comet-tail budget than the rounded-off totality of the Harvard endowment.

And was I disappointed?

Nosireebob.

PICTURE MICHAEL Jackson at the helm of the Millenium Falcon with a crew of Snuffalupagusesque space-doofs--Two things that look like shrunken, tie-dyed Abominable Snowmen, another furry critter with a farting. trumpet-trunk nose (Is flatulence comedy's equivalent of Esperanto?), and a butterfly-winged, cute-as-hell koala that looks like a cross between Tinkerbell and John Madden.

Jackson, as Captain EO, crash lands his ship on a hostile planet, and it's a high-volume, high-speed, high-powered moment, though it borrows a lot from the Rebel Death Star raid in Star Wars.

When the craft finally skids to a halt at the bottom of the humongous Eastman-Kodak screen, fog bubbles up from the floor of the theater, and olfactory stimuli (Blown circuits, melted metal, Vicks Vapor Rub) tingle the audience's orgiastically flaring nostrils. Honest: Huxley's Feelies are alive and well and playing every hour on the hour (even as you read this) in the heart of Central Florida.