Who says preposterous junk can't be fun?

Nicolas Cage, the very definition of the "uneven" Hollywood career, makes his latest venture into popcorn pictures pay off with a droll, tongue-in-cheek turn as a guy who can see two minutes into the future.

Next -- the title is as goofy as the picture -- is an absurd X-Files-Three Days of the Condor mash-up of supernatural chase picture and "Help us stop the Bomb from going off" Deja Vu sci-fi.

It's a movie that doesn't explain the "why," as in "Why does this cheesy Las Vegas magician named Chris (Cage) who goes by Frank Cadillac on the stage possess this two minute warning about his future?" Or why that "rule" goes out the window in the third act.

It doesn't explain how the Feds (Julianne Moore, all tough and rough and funny-mean) know about Chris' "talent."

It doesn't give us motivations for the Euro-twerps planning to set off a nuke in LA. It doesn't even reveal their leader and why he or she knows about Chris and his talent, and how that talent might foil his or her plans. They want to find and kill Chris.

Yeah, I'm guessing this was re-edited to beat the band. Perhaps that's why macho director Lee Tamahori (The Edge, Die Another Day) snapped, went out and was charged with soliciting sex from a cop while dressed as a woman after filming this.

Maybe not.