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OK, here's where we agree - I think that Tom Cruise is an exceedingly strange little man.
It didn't take the couch-jumping episode and the silent-birthing rumours and the psychiatry debate with Matt Lauer to convince me of Cruise's eccentricity (to be kind).
Long ago I came to believe that movie-star grin, flashed relentlessly and with consummate skill at premieres the world over, was the perfect defence to charm folks who were intrigued about all those rumours.
Cruise is a dedicated Scientologist and he has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world since he was in his early 20s, earning hundreds of millions of dollars and living in the kind of cocoon that requires nine-figure wealth and superstardom to support. Those facts alone would ensure a certain eccentricity (more kindness).
But why not deflect the rumours and all the media probing with that perfect smile, the movie star's bulletproof armour?
It worked miracles for two decades, and it was only when Cruise started to talk too much and reveal too much of his inner self - a publicity faux pas if there ever was one - that people began to realize that they didn't like this Tom Cruise too much. Too much sharing, indeed.
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That sharing was bad for the Tom Cruise business, which is the marketing of millions of movie tickets.
In the case of Mission: Impossible III, not enough tickets. What was intended to be one of the summer blockbusters of '06 was, if you judge the conventional media wisdom, a box-office underachiever of epic proportions, with a tally south of $150 million US in North America. (Epic proportions, of course, only when stacked up against Cruise's track record, and a profit participation deal which was reportedly too stacked in the star's favour and likely the reason Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone so publicly parted company with the actor.)
But here's where I part company with the multiplex-going hordes who voted by choosing not to accept this Mission - you missed out on the most enjoyable popcorn movie of another admittedly dismal season.
The third instalment of the series was the best of the lot, a vast improvement over John Woo's mayhem-heavy No. 2 and a great way to spend two hours out of the summer sun.
Compared with the enervating likes of the final X-Men, Superman Returns and the heinous Break-Up, M:I III was great fun.
The key? - separate the embarrassing Cruise-on-Oprah silliness from the first-rate job the actor does as agent Ethan Hunt. (Or as the absent father in War of the Worlds, the spent assassin in Collateral, or as desperate operative in Minority Report. With the exception of The Last Samurai, Cruise has been on a roll at least since 2000, making top-notch "big'' movies with superb filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Michael Mann.)
Cruise is also a producer of the M:I franchise and, whether or not it was his decision to bring Lost's J.J. Abrams on board, it was a good one.
The idea, it appears, was to concentrate more on story and relationships to help us invest more in the characters and, even if Hunt's wedding plans to Julia (Michelle Monaghan) are handled in ham-handed fashion, this is a positive direction. It does add menace and tension to the various prickly situations in which Hunt must attempt to extricate himself and his team (hipster Ving Rhames, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Maggie Q).
The other masterstroke was the addition of big-time acting talent. Philip Seymour Hoffman, hot off an Oscar, brings layers to the villainy of his character we don't usually see in movies like this, and Laurence Fishburne is almost as fearsome as Hunt's boss.
Then you suspend disbelief, don't sweat the lapses in logic and sit back and enjoy the proverbial ride - exotic locales, great gadgets, narrow escapes, impossible stunts and on and on. A heckuva lot more entertaining than the return of the guy in the blue tights or that furball from X-Men.
Too bad the only impossible stunt for some people was forgetting that silly couch bouncing.