Jerry Maguire (1996)

Pretty Good

Absolutely Fantastic

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I had the unfortunate experience of watching this movie while in a hotel with my girlfriend recently. She LOVES this film for some reason and I gave her the remote and that's what stayed on. I was appalled. There is not one single likeable character. Yes, the actors were OK which is why I gave it 2 stars. But the plot is ludicrous. An unlikable jerk (Tom Cruise) is fired by unlikable jerks (The Company) in a cut throat industry, and rides the coat tails of another unlikable jerk (Cuba Gooding Jr.). After an annoying and obnoxious couple hours trying to make unlikable jerks likeable it turns out the once powerful sports agent is a chump who magically falls in love with a loser single mom and her child. A single mom who has no problem letting a strange man she just started dating cuddle up with her 5 year old boy. wouldn't anyone find this a little creepy??? By the end I was in diabetic shock from the forced ridiculous plot and romance.

Continuing my plan to watch every Tom Cruise movie in order, I come to Jerry McGuire (1996)Plot In A Paragraph: When sports agent Jerry Maguire (Cruise) has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent agent with the only athlete who stays with him and a former co worker.In a time when I'm becoming less and less interested in new movies, Jerry Maguire reminds me why I love movies. Cameron Crowe has wrote and directed a really good movie. A movie that is all about its characters, and whose main character spends much of the time desperate and out of luck. Movies like that can be depressing and a tough watch, but Jerry Maguire isn't. It is not without its problems!! It's a tad too long, has too many subplots, we get your standard sports movie cliché scene, and the kid is a little too movie cute too. Cruise (who won the golden globe) holds the full thing together he is literally in every scene. You need to root for the hero in the movie, and you do root for Cruise, who spends more time on the ropes here, than in any other movie.I find Cuba Gooding Jr really annoying here!! He is just so loud!! All he seems to do is yell!! I could not spend more than 5 minutes in a room with his character!! I'm amazed he won the Oscar. Something Crowe is good at, is giving characters with a small amount of screen time, personalities that made them stand out! Regina King is really good at standing out in her small role. Kelly Preston, so adorable in Twins, is so unappealing here and Jay Mohr is perfectly sleazy as a rival sports agent.Jerry McGuire was nominated for 5 Oscars and grossed $153 million at the domestic box office to end the year, the 4th highest grossing movie of 1996. This was Tom Cruise's fifth consecutive 100-million-dollar-plus film, a new record at the time.

For those who endearingly miss Tom Cruise as a fine actor, or Cameron Crowe at the top of his games, JERRY MAGUIRE is a blast from the past. Our titular hero (Cruise) is a smug predator in a cutting-throat capitalistic business, who suddenly grows a conscience, and then immediately makes a wrong move, trying to exhort his peers to also grow a conscience, unfortunately the majority of those is too cynical to accept his noble motion, he is therefore blackballed and according to Murphy's law, must hit the rock bottom, which only leaves him a loyal admirer/accountant Dorothy Boyd (Zellweger), his only client, an under-the-radar football star Rod Tidwell (Gooding Jr.) and a goldfish. Tailored to USA's pernicious winner/loser ethos, the subsequent upswing must diligently tackle two most important things a man must obtain, his career and his love life, to prove the world that he is not a loser but a bona-fide winner, aka, it is the "kwan", that really matters to one's truth worth, a magically coined word by Crowe. Cogently the film thrives as a sincere page-turner albeit Crowe being rather deferential towards all the genre tropes, his script coruscates with a cordial sympathy towards Jerry's fix and a tangential self-awareness of eschewing the mawkishness, conceivably, it is a story borne out of affection and deliberation, but one defective looms large in the end is that Crowe doesn't get more into the agent business maybe because it is not his forte, the triumphalism is approached through Rod's doughty sportsmanship (a cinematic but garden-variety antic with a sharp tang of cruelty, in real life, more often than not, a player is physically permanently damaged), and what Jerry has attributed to the triumph is regretfully left largely untapped, however he would right this wrong in his next film ALMOST FAMOUS (2000), which is more in his element, inspired by the days when he was a contributing editor of Rolling Stones Magazine. One might argue JERRY MAGUIRE is the film where Tom Cruise's Hollywood golden-boy charisma is in his highest voltage, and his effort is incontrovertibly contagious, ever so remarkable he devotes himself entirely to a character which is quite self-referential in a manner (riding a money- seeking business, deviled by commitment issue, cannot deal with being alone), sheds self- consciousness and flexes his muscles to bring forth exigency, compassion and warmth, in company with a honest-to-goodness romance playing off against a self-abasing Renée Zellweger, who also punches above her weight in a conventional ugly-duckling role but spiffed up with a strong sense of dignity and sensibility, she knows when to waive what doesn't worthy of her even it is what she really wants, that is in my humble opinion, the most valuable takeaway of the whole movie. The homey atmosphere is also magically graced by a heart-melting Jonathan Lipnicki as Dorothy's cutie son and Bonnie Hunt's protective but amenable elder sister (although that divorced women group gag should be relegated to a cheesy chick flick dud).Lastly, about Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Oscar victory, he does strut his stuff with a highfalutin bravado, errs on the side of being clownish but essentially an entertaining hoot, like the film per se, a feel- good treat concocted with a conscience.

As upset as I get with him, I can't help but like Tom Cruise. He does a nice job as the irrepressible Jerry Maguire, a sports agent making it big, but feeling empty about it. He works for people he doesn't respect. He analyses where he is at and decides to fend for himself. He will start a new firm by getting a couple top names to go with him. It's not easy and soon he is without a job and without a single client. The only one who goes with him is young Renee Zelwigger. Cruise's fiancée and just about everyone else (even those for him he made big money) bales on him. What is left is a twofold plot. One is his hopes of signing a can't lose prospect played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. The other is starting his life over with a person who really loves him. This is a quick, interesting look into the world of sports agents.