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 So here I am in July perusing the free HD channels looking for a flick both my niece might enjoy and one that won't inspire me to jump through a window. I thought Jerry Maguire was a good pick in that regards.
Yes, I know it is a campy, sappy, lovey dovy chick flick, but it is about football. It has that sports element to keep me happy and Cuba Gooding, Jr. is freaking good in his role as the wild, entertaining wide reciever. Tom Cruise, as much as as a D-bag as he is, was good in this flick too. He could never act like a real football player (Caveat: All the Right Moves (1983): This film launched Tom's career but was long before Tom became a product himself) but I buy him as an agent.
Jerry Maguire is a flick about a sports agent who wants to do right by his world, by himself and by a gal who stuck with him through it all. Tom Cruise is well cast as Jerry Maguire, in what I have to say, might be my favorite role for good old couch-destroying Tom. If you ask me, this film was right about when he went a little off the freaking deep end.
Tom Cruise being somewhat of a weirdo nowadays, he does deserve some props for his portrayal of Maguire in this film. It is by and large the coolest movie I think he has done, except for maybe—well—maybe it is the coolest? He is the perfect sports agent with a conscience. Good looking, boisterous, talkative, convincing, animated and all that makes for a good sports agent in my book.
Look for Cuba Gooding, Jr. in a great supporting actor role. He is the one that made the whole "Show me the money" line work from this film. He comes off perfectly as a football player who is a greedy, money grubbing athlete on the field, but one who is a Hall-of-Famer when it comes to his wife and kids. Jerry takes notice and so does the office secretary, or administrative assistant, Dorothy Boyd, another character acted to a tee by Renee Zellweger, in her break out performance.
I will say in retrospect, having seen the movie several times on cable now, it does get more and more campy. Some of the screen writing is down right brilliant, but the love exchanges were a little too, oh, I don't know - sappy. The whole divorce group thing was plain irritating. What the hell was the point of it? It could have been lost and the movie would have worked fine.
But sappiness, for all of it, still can be either memorable and forgettable. There is plenty of forgettable sappiness in cinema. I would site some examples but you see, I forgot them all. However, Jerry Maguire is famous for the "You had me at Hello" line as well as a hand full of other quotes, which are not cool at all. Memorable, but more chick stuff.
This movie could easily have fallen into the chick flick category, were it not for three albeit brief cameos: Roy Firestone, Mel Kiper and the Monday Night Football Crew circa late 1990s. I should add that the more I happen across this flick—I could never admit to planning on watching this film—the sports scenes seem less and less interesting. Still, it is the one movie about football your chick will watch.
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