It’s surprising sometimes what actually makes it into our cultural lexicon and what doesn’t. For instance, there are thousands of things that social media influencers try to launch into the stratosphere, everything from “Hawk-Tuah” to “On Fleek,” phrases designed to gain traction and define an era and then casually fade into the background, a relic of an age. When Jerry Maguire was hitting theaters back in 1996, that viral phrase came courtesy of Tom Cruise yelling manically into a phone and Cuba Gooding Jr. returning that crazy energy. “Show me the money.” For a time in the late 1990s, that phrase was everywhere, along with “You complete me”, “Help me help you”, and “You had me at hello”. And then, like everything that is of the moment, they faded away, and now if you were to use any of them, you might get an odd look, like someone who was no longer “on fleek”.
Tom Cruise didn’t need that cultural clout to remain relevant in the 90s; he was doing just fine coming off of a chain of hits that began with A Few Good Men and wouldn’t end until his stumble with the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, an underrated movie that wasn’t bad but didn’t exactly light a fire as the famed director’s final feature. Jerry Maguire was just supposed to be yet another in a series of modest hits for the actor, so it was a surprise, to me at least, that it took the world by storm, both critically and with audiences. When it succeeded in getting nominated for multiple Oscars at the 1997 ceremony, though, one name came as no surprise. Tom Cruise had never won an Oscar before. He failed to secure one for Born on the Fourth of July; could Jerry Maguire fix that mistake?
So many people dismiss Tom Cruise as nothing more than a Movie Star, in capital letters. Crediting him for bringing audiences back into theaters during the Covid lockdowns further sells that image of him, downselling that he is a genuine great actor when given the right material. Anyone watching him in films like Magnolia and Born on the Fourth of July can clearly see that he has acting chops; it’s just that he so often chooses to be in action star mode more often than not, dazzling audiences with genuine stunt work and high-octane thrills. Those movies have their audience, especially the Mission: Impossible franchise, but they are not representative of the best that he has to offer.
This film is about the title character, Jerry Maguire, a mid-thirties sports agent working for Sports Management International (SMI). When one of the football players he represents has yet another concussion, he receives criticism from the man’s son, which triggers an epiphany. So he writes a mission statement about what he perceives as dishonesty in the business and his personal desire to work with fewer clients, allowing him to have a closer, more caring relationship with them.
In response to the statement, Jerry’s protégé, Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr), is sent out to fire him. This spurs both men to race against the clock to contact every one of Jerry’s clients in an attempt to retain them. In the end, the only client willing to stay with Jerry is Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), who is disgruntled by the lack of a contract extension with the Arizona Cardinals. Rod is one of Jerry’s smaller contracts, and because of a long tirade over the phone with Jerry, all of the rest of the clients are taken up by Bob Sugar, leaving Jerry exactly what he had been asking for, whether he likes it or not. Leaving the office, Jerry loudly announces that he is starting his own agency, and anyone willing to come along will have a job with him. The only taker is Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger), a 26-year-old single mother.
From there, the narrative follows Jerry as he struggles to gain traction with the contract negotiations for Rod, in large part because the player shuts out the press and blames his struggles on his teammates. It also follows a budding relationship between Jerry and Dorothy, who has fallen in love with him in part because of how much Jerry has bonded with her son. But while Jerry needs her and is attracted to her, he doesn’t seem to be in love with her. He sees Rod, who has a strong and passionate commitment to his own family, and Jerry envies that, but he doesn’t think he is capable of the same level of commitment.
Jerry Maguire is the best of both worlds. It offers manic, high-energy Tom Cruise, complete with the personality his fans flock to the theaters to see, but it also has a passionate, more personal side to him that we don’t see all that often anymore. It is billed as a sports romantic comedy-drama, and it is all those things, but the romance and the emotions are at the core of it all. We see this in each of Jerry’s relationships from his bromance with Rod to his growing relationship with Dorothy and her son. Jerry starts out thinking he has everything: a good job and a fiancé. But he loses both of those things early on in the story, and we watch him struggle to pick up the pieces and rebuild his life all over again.
The template he is building it from is from what he is seeing with Rod. Rod is gregarious and overbearing at times, but he is a fiercely devoted family man. Nearly every time Jerry contacts him, Rod is doing something with his family, including one hilariously silly moment where he is sharing a bubble bath with his kid. This is a far cry from the mental image we have of our professional athletes who travel all the time and we picture unwinding at bars and strip clubs. Jerry sees that passion and even calls him out on it for not showing the same passion on the field or with the press, one of several reasons Rod is having trouble securing a new, better contract.
Rod calls Jerry out, too, for being emotionally bankrupt. When Jerry proposes to Dorothy, in large part to keep her from walking away from his struggling business, Rod sees that Jerry’s heart isn’t in the right place. Dorothy feels it too, eventually giving Jerry permission to end their relationship, something that had to be tearing her apart because of how much she and her son love him. This moment is one of two sequences in the film that seem tailored to manipulate tears from the audience. The other comes at the end when Jerry returns to her, and we get the scene that has been poked fun at in other movies for being overly hokey. Hopeless romantics, though, will eat this stuff up.
Jerry Maguire is about the personal relationships that are so often lost in big business. A player being represented by Bob Sugar looks at Jerry and Rod, hugging it out after Rod finally gets a good contract extension and asks “Why don’t we have that kind of relationship?” When Bob tries to fake it, it’s immediately recognized as insincere. Jerry’s journey from discovering he lacks the personal contact to discovering that there is more than just having fewer clients needed to make that happen is presented here in a realistic fashion. This is one of writer/director Cameron Crowe’s strengths, something he has been demonstrating in his work going all the way back to the beginning with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He has an understanding about humanity and our need for personal contact, not just physical intimacy, to complete us as people. The often maligned line used in the finale, “You complete me,” is brilliant in that way because it falls so fully into the themes of this film. Those connections complete us, often in ways we don’t fully comprehend.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: James L. Brooks, Cameron Crowe, Laurence Mark, and Richard Sakai
Best Actor: Tom Cruise
Best Supporting Actor: Cuba Gooding Jr. (won)
Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: Cameron Crowe
Best Film Editing: Joe Hutshing
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Release Date: December 13, 1996
Runtime: 138 minutes
Rated R
Starring: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renée Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O’Connell, Jay Mohr, and Bonnie Hunt
Directed by: Cameron Crowe
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