Review of Jerry Maguire (1996) by Marty H — 24 Mar 2013

Cuba Gooding Jr. falls to tears on live television as he is made aware of his new 4-year contract guaranteeing him 11.2 million dollars. Now they can pay their bills!!!!! It is amazing to see how far this business of professional athletes and their agents have come since 1995/96. A receiver from my professional football team just jumped ship to our division rivals to receive a mere 47.5 million dollars in just 5 years. We couldn't afford to keep him or add nearly anyone worthwhile to our team in the off season because we have to pay our star quarterback $200 million+ to stick around. This business is corrupt and has gotten out of control. "Jerry Maguire" takes a peak at the corrupt nature of professional sports with Jerry's "manuscript" which awards our lead 15 minutes of fame around the office and a few groupies, (one of them being Renee Zellweger), but ultimately causes him to lose most of his clients, his friends, his fuck-buddy girlfriend, and nearly his sanity. Fortunately for him, his sole remaining client, Gooding Jr. A.K.A. Rod Tidwell, is an equally passionate person seeking fame, success, and respect, but also seeking a trustworthy companion and friend to help him navigate through this treacherous business. Also fortunate for Jerry is the desperate-romantic Zellweger who is eagerly seeking a baby daddy. She took the opportunity to leave her job in front of everyone to follow Jerry and his self righteous path to nowhere. She may not have realized exactly what she was doing, but her manipulative plan to trap Jerry with her compelling love and her 4 year old child worked in the end. She made the most from Jerry's misfortune and his hopeless state of being and ended up marrying him! Crowe doesn't hide this in his writing and what makes this a great romance film for me is that these difficult situations are realized, and avoided, and talked about with the wrong people, (behind your back gossip with friends), until its finally brought up to each other with a sting and a separation. This is all very relatable to the average person. Cruise's character is so into himself and so hopeless and lost that his relationship with Cuba and his family, (including the always enjoyable and hilarious Regina King and Aries Spiers), his "newlywed love project" and her kid were what he needed to support him from going under in his business and more importantly, to bring him back to reality with his own life, prioritizing his wife and family first and letting go of some of the unreal, unethical expectations that being a hot-shot agent calls for. Was the wife and kid more important than the job? In the end, we see them walking together talking about the future, but we don't know what kind of jobs Jerry is going to have or if he has truly changed for good. Crowe could have taken this movie deeper into the nature of the business and displayed how Maguire became independent and free from those restraints and remained successful, but rather settled on the romance between him and Zellweger. This was a good decision because this kind of film when done well is an obvious audience pleaser. It was good with the Academy as well earning nominations for screenplay, picture, editing, best actor and supporting actor with Cuba getting the only award rightfully so. As loud-mouth, egotistical, and annoying as he was, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute he was on screen and the bond that he created with Cruise. I did feel that Tom Cruise should have took home best actor here. Instead, Geoffery Rush took home the award for his performance in Shine. Cruise will get his one day. Maybe he will have to play a role where he isn't a rich, privileged, egomaniacal, know-everything asshole to earn it. Playing roles like that seems come easy for Cruise.

4/5.