On Monday, Lauren had the day off and I had nothing to do at work. So after grabbing lunch with her at the grubby diner "Hubba Hubba's" across from my office, I bagged the rest of the day and went to see Minority Report.

The movie is pretty good. Very good. Its appeal can be quantified thusly: Minority Report features one of my biggest pet peeves and one different one of Lauren's, and yet we both came out of the film happy and entertained.

From my point of view, I don't generally like realistic-looking movie gore. I can stomach flicks like Scream, and managed admirably to remind myself that Band of Brothers used a lot of makeup and prosthetics to achieve its real feel, but I'm turned off when things start to ooze and dangle. I've never seen Nurse Betty because I'm told something graphically gross happens in the beginning. I haven't seen any of the recent war movies released -- except the ridiculous Pearl Harbor -- because each review classified the depiction of war in such terms as "grisly" and "horrifying" and "finally, a movie that proves land mines can indeed disembowel a man." But my Number One Pet Peeve is... Eye Jiggery-Pokery.

Jiggery-Pokery (pronunciation: jig�gery-pok�ery) is defined by Webster's dictionary as "underhanded manipulation or dealings." Applying this to the eye, the term refers to any handling of the unit that might result in it ceasing to look normal, remain whole, and generally function properly. On its own, Eye Jiggery might be pleasant enough, even perhaps amusing; Eye Pokery, dramatically less so. But the combined Jiggery and Pokery are a nefarious evil for me.

Ever since I was little and, in a fit of whatever, raised a careless pinky and scratched my mother's cornea, I've been horrified by the idea of any harm coming to The Eye. Mine, hers, yours, and anyone else's. Even Jewel's. There's a scene in Terminator 2 that I can't watch (luckily, by now I know exactly when it's coming) where you see briefly the aftermath of Evil Terminator sticking a spike through someone's ocular cavity. I flinch when people throw things near my head, for fear of getting hit in the eye. I am terrified of harm coming to one of my white gooey orbs.

Minority Report is RIFE with Eye Jiggery-Pokery. There's so much Ocular Mischief, in fact, that at three separate times in the film I had to cover my own peepers for prolonged periods until The Nasty was over. I won't spoil it for you die-hards, except to warn you (spoiler alert) that if you don't relish the idea of a man getting his eyes removed, or perhaps losing one after it dangles for a few seconds through a floor grate... then, well, close your eyes. Block out the Eye Jiggery-Pokery. You'll be glad you did it.

As for Lauren, she hates Tom Cruise. With a passion. A fervor that she claims equals my distaste for Ocular Mischief. He practically gives her a rash. And still she liked this movie a lot, maybe even more than I did.

Tom Cruise is very much as you'd expect him to be -- perfectly good, yet still Tom Cruise Running Around With A Dirty Face And Those Teeth That, From Certain Angles, Look Like He Has Just One Centred Chopper Rather Than Two Side-By-Side Front Teeth. The supporting cast is uniformly great, and although the story flags a trifle near the end, it proved sufficiently suspenseful and gripping to hold me until the credits rolled.

Steven Spielberg takes his directoral vision seriously, and churns out a really interesting -- but not terribly far-flung (The Jetsons, I'm looking in your direction) view of what the technological future may look like. It's more visually stimulating than flying DeLoreans yet not nearly so mind-boggling as a moon colony or teleportation.

Despite its achievements, though, Minority Report also feels familiar -- like a soup made of marinated chunks of A.I.:Artificial Intelligence, Mission: Impossible 2 sauce and a pinch of Vanilla Sky essence. It's fanciful and confusing and surprising and in many ways implausible, but on the whole, the cocktail goes down easily.

Except for that eye thing. Don't get me started on that again.