JERRY MAGUIRE (1996) A film review by Nick Schaden Copyright 1997 Nick Schaden
I have to admit it: I'm a man who doesn't trust Tom Cruise movies anymore. With a few notable exceptions, it's tends to be either a testosterone driven ego trip ("Top Gun", "Days Of Thunder") or an utterly ridiculous role for Cruise's capability ("Interview With A Vampire"). I'm sure many of you will be pleased to learn that my faith in Tom Cruise has at least been moderately restored, "Jerry Maguire" is a high quality film. It's fresh, funny, and original, and for a movie that doesn't attempt to be anything but a solid comedy, it's very successful.
Now the story: Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is a sports agent of the 90s, he lies, deals million dollar deals with no end, and is sleazy as hell. As you can probably guess, Maguire is thus a SUCCESSFUL agent, with an attractive fiancee (Kelly Preston) , big career, big money, what more could you want? Part way through the movie, Maguire doesn't by into his lifestyle. He wants sports agents to deal the old fashioned way, with more attention to clients, less money, less sleaze. Late at night he types up his ideas, prints several copies and sends it to all the agents in the firm. Sure enough, Maguire's life soon falls apart, his fiancee leaves him, he gets fired from his job and ends up with only one client (Cuba Gooding Jr.). However, soon things look better. He falls in love with his hired help (Renee Zellweger)...you get the picture. Thus lies one of the inherent strengths of the movie, it's has a witty, invigorating, and wonderfully original plot.
To boot, the acting is great by the supporting cast (we'll get to Mr. Cruise later). Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the perfect, ego-driven football player. Renee Zellweger is a fresh new love interest on the movie scene. Also worth a mention is Kelly Preston, while having a very under-developed and two dimensional character she plays a great role as the gold-digging power driven ex fiancee of Maguire.
Also, most importantly, the movie is funny and romantic. Watching that famous "show me the money" sequence is just a riot, and many other scenes come off pretty well in the laughs department too. To boot, as much as I sometimes hate Tom Cruise, you really can feel the passion between Cruise and Zellweger during the movie, and I really felt wanted to see the couple together.
However, the movie does has problems, the most notable being none other than Tom Cruise himself. Cruise gets a relatively easy role as Jerry Maguire (being a power hungry sports agent) and for the first part of the movie, where the sleaze and that trademark grin of Cruise's really falls into play, Cruise works Maguire like a charm. However, whenever Cruise leaves the comfortable zone and tries playing more demanding character roles (emotional, passionate, frustrated, etc.) he falls apart, generally acting like retreads from his previous movies - incredibly artificial on the surface. Through much of the movie he doesn't have HEART in the movie, you see that flashy grin, the man may look cool on the outside, but Cruise just can't seem to touch me with the right emotion.
Overall, while every so often the movie does skip and stumble a bit, the great acting and fresh plot make "Jerry Maguire" a big hit in this reviewers' mind.
Nick's Rating: +3 (recommended)
*** Movies rated from -4 (worst) to +4 (best), 0 = average film ***
-- Nick Schaden Send your comments to: cpunut@uslink.net Check out all of Nick's reviews at: http://uslink.net/~cpunut/movies.html
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