Jerry Maguire.

Review #1513: Jerry Maguire.

Cast: 
Tom Cruise (Gerald "Jerry" Maguire), Cuba Gooding Jr (Rodney "Rod" Tidwell), Renée Zellweger (Dorothy Boyd), Kelly Preston (Avery Bishop), Jerry O'Connell (Frank "Cush" Cushman), Jay Mohr (Bob Sugar), Bonnie Hunt (Laurel Boyd), Regina King (Marcee Tidwell), Jonathan Lipnicki (Raymond Boyd), Todd Louiso (Chad the Nanny), Jeremy Suarez (Tyson Tidwell), and Jared Jussim (Dicky Fox) Directed by Cameron Crowe.

Review: 
"I'm proudest of the fact that I've been able to make a few movies in the studio system that are slightly unorthodox and personal. But it's never quite as easy as you dream that it could be."

Cameron Crowe had his own little path towards filmmaking: writing about music. He graduated from high school at 15 before being hired to write for Rolling Stone magazine, travelling with bands such as the Allman Brothers Band about travels on the road with them and their voices. In 1981, nearly ten years after graduating high school, he finished writing his first book based on the idea to pose undercover as a high school student in San Diego, which resulted in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and a film the following year. Crowe wrote another look into teenagers with The Wild Life (1984) before James L. Brooks took interest in the writer that would result in him producing Crowe's first directorial effort: Say Anything... (1989). This and Singles (1992) were mild successful romantic comedy hits with audiences and critics before Crowe did this for his third effort.

Truly, if you work hard enough, you too can make a heartfelt, overproduced romantic comedy just like the ones your parents made, complete with hokey lines (having me at hello goes straight to the garbage can) that threaten to shake the agent parts out of actual interest. Beyond a long 139 minute stretch that seems to be intricately built on too many characters and plot threads while trying way too hard to be anything other than just a decent "sports" film. When it tries its hands at romance, it doesn't really spring as much enthusiasm beyond what you could find in anything else. It is built on the idea that one really wants to hear much about the plight of a sports agent (with Leigh Steinberg being the inspiration that Crowe would follow around for significant amount of time in 1993 for research) and their crisis of conscience (money isn't everything when it comes to customers-I mean clients, story at 11). In a way I care, but if you zero in on just Cruise and Gooding Jr without most of the others in building itself, you may very well have a better film, or at the very least one that doesn't seem so choked in selling itself short. Rom-com clichés or sports clichés, I'll take the latter any day. Sap has become the way to try and teach someone empathy for years so at least Crowe can say he made something that looks different from the typical film without really doing too much different, complete with a third-act breakup after having them marry (ooh, different from the usual breakup before marriage).

I suspect Cruise wanted to do a role to challenge him from the usual charismatic charmers he usually played, one where he has to bring himself up from narcissistic loneliness. It isn't really that hard to like Cruise anyway, and he does fine with generating some carefully controlled interest, wracked with doubts and zeal. In a sense, Zellweger does fine. She has a zip and interest to her that seems to suit her in trying to elicit charm even while having a script that seems lacking in really giving her something to really do beyond idealism and "cute" moments with Cruise or her on-screen son. Actually, it is Preston and her ferocious honesty that seems more suited for this strange little film, amusing in zippy honesty. Gooding delivers a well-faceted performance with charm and humor, confident and well-suited against Cruise when showing the connection of agent and star beyond just the memorable lines of showing one the money, which is a good highlight in of itself, although the scene near the end with them hugging is probably more poignant than anything else in the film. Lipnicki and Mohr seem to be in competition for who I don't care to see more deliver what is meant to be charming/funny lines (whether out of a child actor with one trick of trying to tug at the audience's heart or a comedian with...one trick of trying to be smarmily hilarious), but I actually enjoyed the resistance displayed by Hunt far better in managing to display the point-of-view of the audience in skepticism. On the whole, I did think the film was at least somewhat successful in generating interest in its agency world, where one has to see beyond big profits and egos to really see something fresh in life. If one can't find something to like in life, it will be hard to sell something in it as well. It might be a bit plodding and cliched, but it is at least passable in most of the right places of quippy humor that shows some heart without needing to become consumed in itself.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.