Jerry Maguire was Cruise’s first effort with director Cameron Crowe, and it’s both more and less satisfying than their second collaboration in Vanilla Sky. It’s got the reputation it has today as a cheesy romantic comedy type movie with some reason. There is a lot of cornball and sappy moments that seem a little forced, a little cliché, and a little melodramatic, especially by today’s standards. We tend to hope that Oscar-nominated movies that lay on the romance these days have a pretty strong hook, first of all, but also tread very lightly when it comes to dealing with the romance, keeping it from getting too stale too quickly. Silver Linings Playbook was able to pull this off.
Ultimately, I think Jerry Maguire does too, and it’s as much a credit to Cruise’s lead performance as Bradley Cooper was fundamental to Silver Linings. The infamous “Show me the money” scene could be read as an indicator of the lengths to which Cruise will go to sell himself in a part, although by now he’s been afforded much more success than Jerry and is much less desperate, so it would seem. Cruise handles the emotional beats as well as he does the fast talking sports agent stuff, and brings some realism to a movie that very easily could have veered entirely into the schmaltz ditch.
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