When
you have a movie where the title is the name of the main character, you can
assume a few things off-hand. First, said character is about to encounter a
heap of trouble. Second, he will most likely find love, or at least re-deem a
relationship. Third, by the end of the movie he will have made some major
changes in his life. “Jerry Maguire” follows all of these rules by throwing the
life of its protagonist upside down and have try to turn everything right side
up. He is like the Coyote in Looney Tunes: if he stops and looks down, he just
might realize he is walking on thin air and will fall into a canyon. Sometimes
it’s better to keep looking up.
The funny thing is, the first time I
watched this movie I didn’t know I was about to fall down a canyon myself. It
was in January of 2003, back when I was still living in Chile. In May my
parents and I were going to move back to my native Canada, but first, a
father-son trip. My father thought it would a great idea for him to take me to
Argentina and take me to see his company’s mining project way up in the
mountains. During our stop in Buenos Aires I didn’t have anything to do while
he was working in his office, but lucky me he had HBO and “Jerry Maguire” was
playing. Now, this is probably some giant cosmic coincidence, but seven months later
my parents had broken up, I was starting my last year of high school with no
friends, and had no clue of what to do with the rest of my life. Like Maguire,
my life had hit a bit of snag.
Tom
Cruise plays Jerry Maguire, a sports agent who loves his job, has a gorgeous
fiancée who loves the idea of him, and has the advantage of looking like Tom
Cruise. Things couldn’t be better until one of his clients suffers a major
injury in the field. In the hospital he sees the player’s son who looks at him
as though he was the scum of the Earth for pushing his dad too hard. This leads
Jerry to write an essay that denounces the dishonesty in his business, which he
distributes to everyone in his office. By the applause they give him the next
day, it is clear they agree with him…in theory. In practice management has
decided to fire him. Not only is he fired in a restaurant so he doesn’t make a
scene, but the person doing the firing is Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr), Jerry’s protégé.
Realising
he has until the end of the work day to convince his clients to work for him
without the support of his company, Jerry rushes to his office and frantically
calls everyone on his list before Bob can beat convince them otherwise. He has
two hits, but one stands out: Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) an egotistical
football player that feels neglected by Jerry. Rod will take a chance with
Jerry on the condition that he chants Rod’s motto: SHOW ME THE MONEY! As time
runs out, Jerry has no option but to scream that motto at the top of his lungs
while the whole office is watching. Appropriately, it pays off.
Before
leaving in semi-defeat, Jerry makes a speech in front of everyone he has worked
with for years asking anyone to come and join him to make a new agency. Whether
out of pity or possibly attraction, Dorothy Boyd dares to come with Jerry (and
the gold fish he steals). Of course it isn’t that easy to re-start your life
from the ground up. Jerry now has
to compete with Bob and every agent with a company, manage the un-manageable
Rod Tidwell, and deal with the fact that his fiancée will not stay with him now
that he is one bad day away from unemployment.
The
rest of the movie follows Jerry as he picks up the pieces and forms an uneasy
relationship with Dorothy. Director Cameron Crowe, who also wrote the film,
shows us a man trying to manage not just an athlete, but also the crisis that
is his life. Jerry smiles and keeps saying everything will work out, but damn
it, life can be hard. Rod is great at acting like a super star football player,
but he is just not that good of a player.
Cuba
Gooding Jr. earned his only Oscar for playing Rod and it is well deserved. When
he is first introduced he is a manic burst of energy that keeps Jerry on the
phone for what seems like hours. When Jerry desperately tries to convince him
to try harder, Rod is convinced it is Jerry who is not trying hard enough to
sell his talents. Then there are moments where Rod shows deeper sides of his
personality by giving Jerry advice on his relationship with Dorothy.
Things
will of course work out in the end for Jerry. We don’t go to the movies to see
a man throw caution to the wind and then be crushed by reality. We need hope
that there is hope and that no matter how bad it gets you can eventually rebuild
your life. Cameron Crowe conveys those ideas by having his characters not focus
on money and power, but on finding true friends and on finding that special
someone that you can look in the eyes and say: “You complete me.” The
man’s a dreamer. Nothing wrong with that.
Years
after seeing “Jerry Maguire” I am yet to find a person who completes me, but like
Jerry I am picking up the pieces. Life is not a movie, but that shouldn’t stop
from grabbing that gold fish and taking a chance on myself.
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