I realize this may come as a total surprise to many of you, but sometimes movie critics get it wrong.  Really wrong.  I had hesitated to go see the new Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz movie (see their smiling faces above on the last day of shooting) because usually reliable A.O. Scott of the NY Times had said this movie was not worth seeing.   Turns out, he totally missed the boat, not to mention the point.  This movie about an improbable romance (think chick flick) growing during the course of a flight from (in)justice sort of film is in fact largely a spoof of the James Bond genre, and a very good one at that. 

Yes it has all the locales we expect of Bond movies (jn this case Austria and Spain are especially glorious), and all the star power and chase scenes one could want. It also has fun and witty dialogue where needed (my favorite scene is where Roy Miller (aka Cruise) says to Diaz, “on 3 we’ve got to get up and start shooting’ and then he says ‘1’ and she starts firing away at random…. and the startled Miller then says ‘what number would you like’? 

At an hour and 50 minutes this movie is over much too fast actually, as the chemistry between Cruise and Diaz is good and well worth watching, and the supporting cast, especially the geeky young inventor, is also good.   What about the plot? Well there is this super-long life battery that the geek has invented.  As an energy source it threatens to shift the balance of power of whoever has the formula to make these things….. but the proto-type needs a little fine tuning, as you will see.   Honestly, its hard for me to figure out what A.O. Scott’s beef really was with this film since there are plenty of watchable Bond films with even less of a plot than that.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this spoof is the completely over the top dare devil stunts of Cruise, who inevitably lands with hardly a scratch. Though mayhem is happening all around him and Diaz, never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. And some of the stunts are so spectacularly improbable, especially without injury that one just has to laugh—- the extreme violence of some movies and the extreme suspending of one’s disbelief are mocked here, in effective fashion.  

My favorite one liner in the film?—-  Cruise grabs Diaz in a restaurant, pulls out a gun and says ‘Nobody move or I will kill myself and then her….”   You get my drift.   Thru plane crashes, thugs on drugs, car chases, bull rushes and hails of bullets, Diaz and Cruise cruise right along to a rather predictable happy ending.   But who cares if there is no twist in the tale of this film.  Its the joy in the journey, and the spiffiness of the spoof and the humor that carries us along on a very pleasant ride, my favorite of the action-adventure-comedy sort this summer.   And guess what— there are no objectionable sex scenes and really no bad language in this film either, which proves my point—- we are being had in this film in a cheeky way, and its more fun to see it for what it is, a spoof, than lament what it is not.