Round-trip flight to Russia?  $1800.

Four days in a Ritz-Carlton in Moscow?  $2000.

Being able to tell your wife that Patrick Dempsey says hello?  Priceless.

I'm impressed that Dempsey, like fellow '80s survivor Jason Bateman, has managed to reinvent himself as a credible adult lead, but I'm even more impressed by the way fans of their earlier work feel like they've been rewarded for being fans because these guys turned out to be pretty darn good as adults.

In Bateman's case, he's the king of the sardonic one-liner, an amazing reactor, someone who constantly seems a little bit dumbfounded by everything going on around him.  It's a great comic persona, and he's managed to turn that into an industry of sorts.

For Dempsey, it's a little more radical a reinvention.  After all, he was a skinny nerd in most of his '80s films, occasionally a wizard with the ladies, but also physically representing a specific kind of '80s dork.  I doubt there are many skinny nerds feeling a kinship to the current incarnation of Dempsey, though.  He came back all cool and polished and… well… McDreamy.

And that's probably why I was told just before I left Los Angeles that the only important interview I was doing was the one with Dempsey.  Mrs. McWeeny told me to be nice to him, and I have the distinct feeling that his happiness was more important to her than mine.  Such is the power of "Can't Buy Me Love," damn it.

To be fair, Dempsey seemed like a really nice guy, and we even joked around a bit before we started the interview.  He'd had a lozenge emergency earlier in the day, and since I travel paranoid, I had plenty of Halls in my bag.  Crisis averted, and instantly, Dempsey and I were lozenge buddies.

Do not disparage the power of being lozenge buddies with someone.  After all, it got my wife the "please send her my best" she was looking for.

"Transformers: Dark Of The Moon" opens everywhere RIGHT NOW.