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Jerry Maguire
I was talking to Sarah as I watched this movie and I was talking about how, though I recognise how perfect this movie is watching it now, I still can’t fully acknowledge it as a great movie, but I imagine that one day, when I “grow up”, it could easily be my favourite movie ever. There’s this small part of me that realises I might not have lived enough to truly let this movie in.
It is, though, full of the kind of crowd-pleasing (and I count myself for once among that crowd) lines heard in movies like Dirty Dancing (“Nobody puts Baby in the corner,”) and The Princess Bride (“As you wish!”). Every scene has a quote.
Ultimately, to me right now, it’s too far from the Cameron Crowe I’ve come to love with Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky. The ethereal quality is missing, and I fear that his next movie Elizabethtown might return to this crowd-pleasing form. But I can’t deny that it’s really quite perfect.
September 20th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
[...] I have to say, much as I loved the first of these movies back in 1996, much as John Woo’s sequel eventually won me over on multiple viewings, my anticipation for this movie was literally non-existent. Even after the spectacularly gripping opening (most of the teaser trailer, “there’s an explosive device in your head …”) I wasn’t surprised to find myself let down when the movie appeared to bizarrely flash back over Tom Cruise’s career to either Vanilla Sky, Jerry Maguire or a combo of the two combined with True Lies or Mr and Mrs Smith. Ethan Hunt is married? It could’ve been a disaster, and like I said, it wouldn’t have surprised me … to say the movie doesn’t have its share of clichés and homages would be a big fat lie – here’s a Spiderman moment early on (oh no! Ethan can’t tell the love of his life what he’s up to! But oh, how cute, she trusts him!), a Minority Report moment towards the end (that one might be a spoiler – matter of fact I can’t remember what it was, lol, but it made sense when I was making notes), etc etc. But we can’t complain – Director of the first movie, Brian De Palma, has been ripping off Hitchcock (in the best way possible) for decades. I just say this to show how much I obviously wanted to hate it (I really don’t know why, it’s a mystery, so don’t ask me, lol). [...]