A
defining film of the 90s, with its dialogue and music saturating the culture, Jerry Maguire was the rare item that
seemed to please casual audiences, critics, award-givers, lovers of
character-driven independent films, and both men and women with its love story
set in the world of pro sports. It was
as though shaped by the gods to be the most perfectly crowd-pleasing of all
possible romantic comedy-dramas; something that – like Titanic the following year – could only be disliked for being so
overexposed. I don’t know about all
that. I was never a fan, and seeing it
again, I don’t feel that it holds up very well at all. In fact, I detect all sorts of indicators of
the calculated schmaltz and pretension that would come to obliterate Crowe’s
reputation in the ensuing decade via ponderous disasters like Vanilla Sky (2001) and Elizabethtown (2005). Only Almost
Famous (2000), it seems, remains unsullied by the pronounced feeling of
letdown felt by the world towards Crowe’s movies. Tom Cruise and Renne Zellweger are so carefully
engineered to be loveable that it’s almost sickening at times. Who can possibly relate to these
preposterously ‘good’ characters? In
fact, who can possibly relate to Tom Cruise at all? His failure to comprehend or convey any normal
human emotions has appropriately landed him in safe action movie parts for most
of the past 20 years. From the cute
blond toddler unpacked and delivered straight from Central Casting to the
one-dimensional corporate weasels who conspire against poor Jerry, I don’t find
anything authentically impressive about the film except for its success at
conning the public. Don’t get me wrong;
I don’t think it’s bad; I just think it’s hollow due to taking the easy road
far too often when it has so many wide-open opportunities to do something
challenging or original.
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