Jerry Maguire

Rating

Director

Cameron Crowe

Screenplay

Cameron Crowe

Length

2h 19m

Starring

Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renee Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O’Connell, Jay Mohr, Bonnie Hunt, Regina King, Jonathan Lipnicki, Todd Louiso, Mark Pellington, Jeremy Suarez, Jared Jussim

MPAA Rating

R

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Review

A promising filmmaker gives audiences just what they crave with Jerry Maguire, a moderately in depth look at the world of sports client management.

Jerry Maguire begins quite conventionally following our title character (Tom Cruise), a sports agent, as he pens a mission statement promising more intimate relationships with the players he represents. The letter leads to his termination and despite his attempts to take his clients with him, he manages to secure only two men, one a promising quarterback (Jerry O’Connell) and the other a loud-mouth, money-hungry family man (Cuba Gooding Jr.). The only person who leaves the firm with him is the quiet accountant (Renee Zellweger) who secretly fancies him and ultimately ends up in a relationship with him.

When you watch romantic films, be they comedy or drama, you expect certain elements to present themselves, churning the story through expected narrative arcs. Crowe’s screenplay deftly navigates those clichés and turns out a film that cleverly plays with those mechanics, taking the audience in unexpected directions. There are still some predictable moments, but after the first half hour, it becomes more and more difficult to guess what might get in the way next.

Cruise isn’t a great actor, though he’s turned in some spectacular performances. While this doesn’t quite belong in the league of his work in Magnolia, it is probably one of the most humane performances that he’s given. He’s exceeded by most of the rest of the cast, including a surprisingly capable performance from Cuba Gooding Jr. At the time the film came out, all anyone could talk about was the “Show Me the Money” scene, which made Gooding Jr.’s performance look utterly annoying, a caricature that bore little resemblance to a real person. After seeing the full feature, you can probably see why he was an instant Oscar success story. That his subsequent career hasn’t quite lived up to that potential is disappointing, but not necessarily unexpected. Zellweger delivers her best performance since Bridget Jones’ Diary, a selfless, emotionally rich single mother. Bonnie Hunt and Regina King are also quite good in small parts.

With two films, Cameron Crowe turned his career around, making him a popular figure in film and audience circles. That promise was short lived. After this and Almost Famous, his career took a nose-dive, both in terms of output and the quality of said output. Yet, creating two compelling films in a short career is worth something.

Although it is ostensibly a film with sports as a key component, Jerry Maguire is quite a bit more than a sports film in the vein of Any Given Sunday. The film is warmer and more interesting than one might give it credit for. It plays with tropes in new ways that displayed quite a bit of potential from its director and is ultimately a film worth catching even without devoting much attention to it.

Review Written

June 29, 2021