While Jerry Maguire was a huge hit in 1996, I didn’t see it then. Truth be told, between all the “Show me the money!” stuff and “You had me at ‘hello’,” I can’t say that I was much interested. Oversaturation of lines that were either annoying through repetition or were cloyingly cute were not my thing. Besides, I find Tom Cruise rather bland. He’s not a bad actor, but he rarely really gives a performance I find all that interesting. Here we had a movie that is a rom-com about, among other things, sports, the business side of sports, and had Tom Cruise in it, and none of those things excite me all that much.
But then I saw Cameron Crowe directed it, and that alone made me change my mind.
Superstar sports agent Jerry Maguire (Cruise) has a revelation about, well, dealing with the business he does with something like a conscience, developing relationships with a smaller number of clients, and generally trying to help the people he represents in a way that would actually help them. He writes up that in a manifesto and doesn’t think much about it. Then a week later, he’s fired. The man who pulled the trigger (Jay Mohr) is a former protege, and when Jerry opts to make a big show of leaving the agency to start his own, the only people who go with him are one single mother from the office pool, Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) and all of one client, Arizona Cardinals runningback Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr). OK, there was a second client, but that one doesn’t last long. For Dorothy, Jerry develops affection. With Rod, Jerry finds he has a rather demanding client who will need to change his ways if he wants to be shown that money he believes he deserves.
By the by, for all that “Show me the money” was a very overplayed bit when this movie was new, I will admit it is a very effective scene as it establishes Rod’s initial character while showing Jerry losing his client base to Mohr’s Bob Sugar because Rod will just not make the whole thing easy and let Jerry answer some of his other calls before Bob gets to them first.
So, does Jerry Maguire become a better person? Honestly, I am not 100% sure. I didn’t see much of what he was like before he was fired to make that assumption, but he did seem to be living a shallow lifestyle. The thing is, Cruise often plays characters that come across as shallow, even when they’re not supposed to be, so for me, that didn’t make much difference.
Regardless, what do I make of Jerry Maguire? Did it get past my general apathy for sports, sports agency, rom-coms, and Tom Cruise? Well, no. It has all of the familiar rom-com moments, including a precocious kid (Jonathan Lipnicki), a third-act break-up combined with a reconciliation complete with a line even more cloying that “You had me at ‘hello.” I mean, “You complete me”? Given how much the movie emphasized Jerry Maguire should not be alone from every former girlfriend he had, that sort of a line set off my alarm bells more than anything else. Still, Crowe makes charming movies, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Jerry Maguire is a well-produced movie, memorable for obvious reasons, that just isn’t my thing.
Grade: B+
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