Jerry Maguire himself was meant to be an uber dreamboat in this classic nineties romantic drama about a man who turns his life around upon realizing his place in the world isn't fulfilling, and sacrifices everything to become the man he always wanted to be.
Hm.
The adventure Jerry Maguire brings us along for is, admittedly, sweet and compelling. The message itself, however, rings insinscere in some aspects and leaves the viewer with a bad taste in their mouthes. The guy just wants to do the right thing, and I can respect that in theory, but a few things immediately occured to me upon rewatching this movie with M:
1: If being a sportsagent is so completely unsatisfactory, why would he continue to do it? It is this point in particular that makes much of the movie's message feel twisted and not altogether fully formed. An ethical sports agent? You're in the wrong boat, kid. Watching Jerry swim upstream in a corporate mold that didn't want him felt unnecessarily tragic. I didn't like watching this aspect of the movie, and the nobility to be found in Jerry's 'I did it my way' floundering style came across as a little more pessimistic than likely intended. I would have liked to see him take his education and experience into a position paralell to but unconnceted with bleeding sports teams out of as much money as humanly possible for self-righteous assholes who functionally contribute little to society besides distraction and dream fodder.
2: Most people don't care about sports. Basing so much of the movie around sports themselves confused me, what with the movie being about honesty and integrity and the evolution of one's conscience. The sports world is, as the movie shows us at nauseam, a completely backward franchise worshiping dollars over the health and stability of not only the players but virtually every human facet of the Great Production itself. There is absolutely no good in catering to the breathless wait for injury or next massive impact between helpless dreamers who beg and scrape for deals with corporate Goliaths, which was absolutely the state of things then and even moreso now. The kind of people who watch football are largely uninterested in the trials of someone like Jerry, and the people who are interested in Jerry could not care less about football.
3. Cuba Gooding's character was completely unlikable in virtually every scene. Jerry gives him this advice in one of the few genuine exchanges between them (which is to say that Jerry and Rod's relationship is almost exclusively predicated on Jerry doing his best to suffer through Rod's incessant yammering and spin their dismal situation into something positive):
"Alright. Here's why you don't have your ten million dollars yet. You are a paycheck player. You play with your head. Not your heart. In your personal life? (points) Heart. But when you get on the field you're a businessman. It's wide-angle lenses and who fucked you over and who owes you for it. That's not what inspires people."
You're exactly right, Jerry. That's not at all what inspires people, and I couldn't have summed up Rod Tidwell any better than that. Shortly thereafter we see Rod get hurt, which is sad, but accentuated mortality doesn't necessarily equate to excess of 'heart' in my book. This character experienced absolutely no transformation or progress and wound up with more work than he probably should have gotten.
For a movie that points out people who live their lives without consideration for philosophical attainment and work their jobs in a completely mindless and selfish manner ultimately resulting the creation of armies of unfulfilled sycophants... I don't know. It certainly doesn't mind sport stars who rake in millions for playing a game well when people like Jerry and Dorothy who spend months and years killing themselves begging, borrowing and stealing for said sports stars have difficulty making ends meet. The inherant 'failure' of being initially offered one-point-seven million for three years as a signing contract (that's five-hundred and sixty-six thousand and change per year) is so crushing to the star himself that he almost admits would-be defeat until his wife begs him out of it. This is a man who majored in marketing and played in the NFL. He couldn't get a good job? I don't beleive that, nor do feel an ounce of sympathy for him.
4: The movie itself mentions racial stereotypes as being unfair and arbitrary while consistently cashing in on them. Race is always a hot-button topic, but all the gold-chain loud-mouthed sassy attitude slangin' was vaguely offensive and insulting. It made me hate Rod Tidwell even more, and the effort in this direction just reminded me I was watching a MOVIE that deals with ISSUES and HAS A HEART. I don't care about your agenda, Jerrry Maguire, I want to be entertained, and the best way to entertain me is with compelling people who have unique stories and an interesting point of view. It was a series of cheap shots, and much of these scenes centered around low-hanging fruit I find distasteful
Overall the relationship between Jerry and Dorothy was trivial and situationally convenient which belies the attempted message that if you're true to yourself you really can have it all. The kid was cute, but then what movie kids aren't, the story was reasonably believable but uninteresting and conflicted, and overall the true-to-life feel Jerry Maguire angles for is largely exhausting and disheartening.
Don't watch Jerry Maguire.
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