On her show last week, Oprah Winfrey referred to Knight and Day — the new Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz action comedy — as a perfect date movie. And that about sums up the appeal of this ridiculous but fun mash-up of James Bond and Romancing the Stone.

You don’t watch this movie to dissect the craft or to seek some insight into the human condition. You watch it while sharing a tub of popcorn and an overpriced Coke with your best girl (or guy) and you hope that you’ll both walk out with a smile on your face.

On that front, Knight and Day accomplishes its mission.

It’s not that the movie is without pedigree. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are big stars and fine, underrated actors (see Diaz’s work in Being John Malkovich and In Her Shoes if you’re quick to dismiss her as just a pretty face). And director James Mangold has a rich, varied resume, covering indie fare (Heavy and Copland) and enjoyable genre exercises (Identity and 3:10 to Yuma) as well as Oscar winners (Girl, Interrupted and Walk the Line).

All that talent, including supporting turns by Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano and Viola Davis, makes for a nice high-gloss package — you never doubt you’re in the hands of professionals. It’s just not a very ambitious affair.

Knight and Day works best as a comedy and an action film, and worst as a romance. Cruise and Diaz lack chemistry (in fact, this film has inspired me to write a whole post on screen chemistry… stay tuned) and you never quite care about their fate as a couple.

But they both earn laughs. Cruise, in particular, is a gifted comic actor, something we were reminded of by his Lex Grossman act in Tropic Thunder. As Roy Miller, a CIA spy on the run, he exudes a manic oddball goofiness that puts a clever twist on his action heroics. He got a real belly laugh out of me when, after drop-kicking a helpless waiter during a restaurant escape, he turns to the guy and says “I’m sorry, I thought you were making a move.”

Plot matters little in Knight and Day… if you try to count the absurdities and not just go with it, you’ll lose track before the opening credits are through. Cruise’s superspy is either out of his mind or two steps ahead of the bad guys (or maybe both). Diaz is a restorer of antique cars who has a meet-cute with him before boarding a plane and can’t quite shake him for the rest of the movie. Chasing a MacGuffin (in the form of a perpetual energy source), they drive, fly, sail and train to locations all over the globe.

And that’s about it. The rest is clever stunt work (much of it performed by Cruise himself), some funny jokes and a whole lot of high-wattage star power. And on a Saturday date night in July, that pretty much covers the bases.