With all the hype surrounding the new baby and the weird Scientology stuff and the new movie being released, I got to thinking about the last time I went to a theater and forked over full ticket price to see a Tom Cruise movie. And I just couldn't remember when that was. I may have paid to see the first Mission Impossible, but I really have no recollection of ever doing so and don't remember if the release of such a movie would have intrigued me that much at the time.

Days of Thunder is probably the only Cruise movie I can think of that would be worthwhile to see in the theater. (Did Nicole Kidman get naked in that? It's been too long.) But I didn't see that until it was out on video. Nope, I have to go all the way back to Top Gun, and I'm pretty sure that a law was passed sometime back in the mid 80's that required everyone to see that one.

It's not that I've had anything against Tom for the past 20 years, nor do I really despise him now. Sure, he's a smug religious kook with a Napoleon complex and no (zero) sense of humor who surrounds himself with yes-men and lackeys, but there are plenty of people like that in this world. He could just as easily be the waiter whose pants are a little too tight; the one who never looks you in the eye and recites the specials just a little too quickly before rolling his eyes at your uninspired menu choice. And it's not that he's a bad actor... he's just not a great actor. His looks are just typical and unspectacular enough that he can pull off pretty much any role and at least be respectable (except comedy - Top Gun is probably his best comedic performance to date).

Maybe it has something to do with his choices of movies. Minority Report was a decent movie, but if anyone other than Spielberg directed it, you would only be able to see it on the Sci-Fi channel. The Last Samurai was just an offensive premise - a white alcoholic American washes out of the post-Civil War era military and goes to Japan where he immediately revolutionizes and dominates the centuries-old way of the Samurai? Really? And the roles he takes just for a shot at an Oscar are even worse. He seems to operate under the assumption that altering the length/color of his hair qualifies as going above and beyond. Sure, he can occasionally pull it off, but no viewer will ever look at the screen and think anything other than "That's Tom Cruise."

With that being said, I forked over $8.50 (prices went up again?) on Friday night and saw MI:3 with the Mrs. If you don't want the plot spoiled, stop reading here - the premise of this movie is exactly - exactly! - the same as this season of 24. Mid-level IMF agent hooks up with evil international arms dealer to get some type of generic pocket sized doomsday weapon to Middle Eastern terrorists so that America can attack said terrorists, find weapon, and justify a war to benefit the military industrial complex. Replace mid-level IMF agent with President, replace "pocket sized" with "fits in a truck," and make the super villain (who's dumb enough to go along with the plan in MI:3) more realistic and threatening, and you've got 24, starring another kook with a Napoleon complex. Seriously, I paid money for this?

And all the critics talk about how Philip Seymour Hoffman as the villain makes the movie. And sure, he spits his lines with a nice understated intensity, but is he really a bad guy? How does a bad guy just waltz into the Vatican? How can a bad guy just make phone calls to IMF agents without his calls being monitored and traced by every intelligence agency in the western world? If my memory serves, he only kills one person in the movie, and that was his own interpreter. (And how convenient that he goes to Italy with a chinese interpreter and happens to run into a hot chick who speaks... wait for it... chinese!) By comparison, Tom's girlfriend/wife kills two guys, including the real villain, within 30 seconds of first touching a gun.

Don't get me wrong, the movie is entertaining. It looks and feels exactly like an episode of Alias (same director), and I've never seen an entire episode of Alias. Two big thumbs up for what they did with Keri Russell's eyes when she died and for putting a scene in the middle of the movie to develop the love story while further complicating things with a quickie wedding - it provided the perfect bathroom break for me and like 10 other guys in the theater.

I'm kinda hoping, though, that Tom's ego takes over the way it did after the first MI movie so that MI:4 just involves Tom driving a motorcycle through flames for 2 hours. Now THAT I'd pay money to see.