| Who on earth is Matt Gerson? |
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| Who on earth is Matt Gerson? |
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It's Tom Cruise playing his Color of Money role, and instead of [a] low-class huckster trying to peddle hot cars from over the border (as in Rain Man), and make buck-os on the world of the import/export biz, here Tom Cruise's Jerry is all surfaces glistening at all times, machine intense, sellaholic with a credo of giving and being there for a collection of spaced-out, greedy, shallow, and mercenary athletes that, yes, even take in our Phoenix Cardinals, that human Rorshot's [sic; Rorschach's] test of an idyllic, good-looking guy Tom Cruise, now invading the realm of the super agent (Arlis on HBO watch out!) and as we first join him at the beginning of the film, his world is ending after the ultimate bachelor party for him and his neurotic, sexually psyched out and overdrive nymphomaniac wife-to-be named Avery Bishop, who screams and cries and manipulates in bed as well as in business, having learned the art of the deal from Mr. I'll Be There For You Twenty-Four Hours A Day, none other than the king of pose and the ruler of phony sales bromides that assault us again and again in over detail in two and a half plus hours of sometimes eye-opening insights into sports but more often tediously overstretched, and the reaction of the females to Tom down and out we can predict, as the smarmy cretin Bob Sugar, played by Jay Moore, who learned at the knee of the money and deal maker of his dreams, stabs a knife into the back of Jerry Maguire, so he gets his comeuppance from another shallow user of others' needs, who just happens to be as insanely greedy and driven as he is, but when Sugar drops in public the axe on his former mentor, we just know that Jerry Maguire is guilty as charged, based on his phony cascade of BS that Jerry can dress up as caring for his clients.
Jerry Maguire is one sales prima donna deserving of this, and we watch and know, just as the sun will come up tomorrow in Phoenix, and the Cardinals will blow any big game, that Jerry will turn out to be an agonized, destroyed, shattered, and, yes, rebuilt in well over two and a half hours later of better man than they are Gunga Din, with his one mediocre football player receiver client to call his own.
Jerry Maguire delivers every cliché about sports ever though of or contemplated, and locker rooms, and naked guys, and women doing reporting, and greedy clients, and whispered deals, and manic telephoning, and lies as the mother's milk of the sports agentry biz, to nasty coaches demolishing the last solitary agent that Jerry has, after Sugar has stolen every last one of his clients, and Jerry was honest yet naïve enough to spread a memo around about fewer clients, quality clients, and total caring and giving and looking after, which he circulated to everyone at his agency, only to become the first and most visible victim of the smaller yet personal oriented agent world he paraded around in a moment of guilt.
Jerry Maguire comes to the brilliant conclusion that the world of sports is down and dirty, totally corrupt, and the salaries warped--what else is new?--and it would not be worth more than a mere Angle if it wasn't for two newcomers, one Jerry falls in love with, the sensitive-eyed, lovely-bodied Dorothy, played by Rene Zellweger, an Annette Bening but so much lovelier and softer in features similiar lady, who has the spunk and cajones to lead when Jerry is pushed out with him for reasons that become familiarly clear as their tiny agency, with one loud and screaming machine gun motormouth of a ho-hum football player pass catcher, Rod, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr., being the only client, becomes the refuge of a has-been suddenly agent of lost renown and buried hopes Jerry Maguire, his sheen and greasy manipulations finally having put him at the bottom of the ladder, and the soft-eyed lovely Dorothy tries to love him back to success, but it's her mouthy and hilarious say anything beglassed son named Ray, played by Jonathan Lipnicki, who steals our hearts, with his comic relief of this soooo long shallow chronicle of a shallow world, an overslick agent destroyed by his own phoniness, then saved by the love of a good...oh, you know the formula.
Jerry Maguire is a vehicle only for Tom Cruise, with enough wheels to be entertaining--barely--but hardly profound or clever, and full of jockstaff [sic] clichés.
I'm Matt Gerson with two and a half Angles out of five for Jerry Maguire.
| No way, this guy scares me! Take me back to |  | Deuce |
