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Jerry Maguire Movie Review

Jerry Maguire is a 1996 romantic comedy film directed by Cameron Crowe and starring Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr. It’s such a tired rom-com.

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“You complete me“

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Fired from his job for exposing the alleged illegal practices that exist in his profession, sports agent Jerry Maguire starts his own agency. However, he manages to find only one client and the two eventually fall in love. I have been putting off watching this movie for years, and I clearly did that for a valid reason. Watching it finally for the first time, it annoyed me so much with all of its cheese.

What I did like is the beginning of their romance as it was rather sweet and touching. Those scenes were the best ones, and I also really liked Jerry and Rod’s earlier scenes when they formed their friendship. However, that was all ruined afterward with impossibly high, horribly theatrical emotionality.

I could not stomach that third act, not even in the slightest. It was simply too sappy for me and I found it frustratingly cloying. There was a lot of crying, a lot of implausibly romantic sayings and a lot of horribly cheesy quotes that plagued this entire third act. The movie is famous for these quotes, and I had heard of them before of course, but watching them in a movie is even more annoying. This is not how people talk in real life. It represents everything that is wrong with the romantic comedy genre, and I am sick and tired of it.

The performances, though, are excellent. Renee Zellweger is so charming and positively realistic in one of her earlier roles while Cuba Gooding Jr. deserved his Oscar for this terrific performance. But this is first and foremost a great showcase for Tom Cruise who has simply never been better in the most complex role for him yet.

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But Jerry Maguire is very unlikable in its central character, quite uninteresting in the whole sports agent angle, and the mixing of the sports and the romantic comedy genres was not well done at all, which resulted in a messy tone and an overlong runtime.

I have been putting off watching Jerry Maguire for years, and I was ultimately right in my hunch that it’s a mediocre movie. The performances are excellent for sure with Tom Cruise being particularly terrific in his career-best performance. But the tone is messy, the runtime is too long and the ridiculously cloying third act is frustrating. The sickeningly cheesy quotes are even worse. It’s an overrated movie that represents everything that is wrong with often horrendous genre that certainly is the dreaded romantic comedy.