Jerry Maguire

Tom Cruise plays Jerry Maguire, a hot shot sports agent who gets sacked after he has a crisis of conscience and advises his colleagues to follow an ethical path rather than the unholy dollar. Only one person believes in him, staff accountant and single mother Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) and they set up shop with predictable results.

Crowe’s script deftly mixes drama, comedy and romance in an unquestionably mainstream but nevertheless engaging story about following one’s heart. That is, until the film’s latter stages when he abandons the nicely variegated approach that made the film up to that point so watchable and drowns it with a tide of feel-good treacle.

Somewhat surprisingly, Cruise was Oscar-nominated (the statue went to Geoffrey Rush for Shine) for a performance whose only remarkable quality is that he appears at times to be channeling Michael J. Fox’s energetic style of a decade earlier. Zellweger, who is winsomely charming throughout was not, however Cuba Gooding Jr. won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his entertaining turn as Jerry’s only client, one which gave pop culture the catch-phrase “Show me the money”.

Crowe hit the big time with this movie and he continued its soft-focussed, pop tuned, crowd-pleasing formula with Almost Famous before fading from the limelight.  

 

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