Hey!  It’s 1996!  No, actually, it’s not, but can we pretend like it is to make the fact that I’m 14 years late to Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire seem mildly less pathetic?  In my defense, I was only ten years old when the movie came out, so I wasn’t exactly in the target demographic upon the time of its release, but I easily could have viewed it anytime within the last eight or so years and been fine.

Alas, I didn’t get to it until last night.  But I have now seen it, and I can comfortably say that I enjoyed it.  I found it to be thoroughly good.  Not great, but quite good.  I don’t know, perhaps it’s because I’m so far behind the zeitgeist, but I quite honestly don’t see what all the fuss was about.

Jerry Maguire, if you don’t know (and seriously, you don’t know?  I knew without even seeing it) is the tale of the eponymous sports agent (played by that one guy, I forget his name) who grows a consience and decides to draft a mission statement for how he feels the agency should operate from now on: less clients, more personal.  Well this gets him fired.  So he desperately clings to the one client who sticks with him, a cocky and talented, yet underappreciated wide receiver from Arizona (Cuba Gooding Jr. in an Oscar-winning performance).

Helping him in his newfound (and not wholly desired) career path is accountant and love interest Renee Zellweger in a career-launching performance.  She is the single mother of adorable moppet Jonathan Lipnicki who has an affinity for spurting off random facts.  Quick, how much does a human head weigh?

Maybe it’s because I’m a guy, maybe it’s because the more sentimental moments of the film have so intensely oversaturated the lexicon, or maybe it’s just because it’s maybe not as good as everyone remembers, but I found myself far more intrigued with the sports half of the movie than the romance half.  Gooding Jr.’s charismatic performance is really just the cherry on top of the sundae that is the remarkably compelling tale of an agent’s fall from grace, whereas the romance plotline left me checking my (imaginary) watch (although I did enjoy Bonnie Hunt’s role as Zellweger’s quippy older sister).

But in saying that, my inner pretentious hipster didn’t jeer nearly as hard at the sappy climax as I thought it would.  “You complete me” came and went without a single ironic thought going through my head (although I’m just going to say it, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jerry and Dorothy didn’t make it).  As the film came to an end, I was left with a mildly pleasant, yet underwhelming sensation.  I had finally seen Jerry Maguire, and while I found it enjoyable, it certainly did not have me at hello.

Posted under Kyle's Adventures in Pop Culture