December 17, 1996 -- "Jerry Maguire" is one of those rare sports movies with a brain to go with its heart. Oh, they've all got heart, but how many of them have a believable plot and dialogue that sparkles?
Only a few that I can recall offhand, "North Dallas 40" is one, but the one that reminds me most of this film is "Everybody's All American." Like those two films, "Jerry Maguire" is a love story set against the seamy underbelly of professional sports. Like those films, it tells about the conflict between the pure sport and the business of sports, and like those two this is an excellent film.
Jerry Maguire, a sports agent, is played by Tom Cruise. One day, he's sitting on top of the world, the top agent in a big firm. Then, he develops a conscience. He writes a mission statement summing up all the problems with being a sports agent and makes suggestions on how to make the business more humane.
The mission statement gets him fired and he loses all his clients except for one, a malcontent football player named Rod Tidwell played by Cuba Gooding Jr. ("Boyz N The Hood"). Maguire asks if anyone in the office will join him as he starts his own sport agent business. One woman, Dorothy Boyd, played by Renee Zellweger ("Reality Bites"), who happens to be in love with him, quits her job to join him.
Maguire is unaware that Boyd, who only met him once before, has a crush on him, but he appreciates the help. The rest is a love story. Will Maguire fall in love with Boyd? Will he get the big contract for Tidwell? This is Hollywood. What do you think? I wasn't the only one in the theater with a tear in his eye at the end of this movie.
The details don't matter. What does matter is that Cruise, Zellweger, Gooding and the rest of this cast are great in this film. Bonnie Hunt ("Jumanji") is perfect as Boyd's intelligent, protective sister, Laurel, and Regina King ("A Thin Line Between Love and Hate") is wonderful as the football player's longsuffering, but very smart, wife, Marcee Tidwell. Child actor Jonathan Lipnicki is excellent as Dorothy Boyd's son, Ray.
As you can tell, there are a lot of characters in this film, and each of them gets significant on-screen time. There is no shortage of character development in this film and so it is not surprisingly a long film, clocking in at 138 minutes. Some people don't like long films and lots of subplots, but I've seen films a lot shorter than this one that seemed longer. This one went by fast. It rates an A.
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