Jerry Maguire

Grace Pinkus 

October 17th, 2019 

Cinema Movie Review

Muench 

​

        For my movie review, I decided to choose Cameron Crow’s Academy Award winning ‘Jerry Maguire.’ This touching, romantic, sports film stars Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr. and Renée Zellwege. After experiencing a life altering epiphany about his long-time career as a sports agent for Sports Management International (SMI), 35 year old Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) writes a heartfelt, company wide mission statement about having less clients for more quality service. In turn, Maguire is quickly fired the next day. Desperate to hold onto his remaining clients, he starts his own management business, along with previous SMI employee and single mother Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellwege). The film follows Maguire and Boyd as they rely on their single client, Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), to keep their firm afloat. One thing that I loved about this movie was how the plot progressed. I thought it was so smart of Crowe to combine to separate stories into one work - the romance story and the sports story, and make it flow. I have always loved sports movies, and I am a sucker for a romantic movie, so to have both of these in one was so enjoyable to watch. In addition, the casting choices were very well made and created a story that I was really interested in. Cruise brought the charm, Zellwege brought the love, and Gooding brought the comedy. Another character choice that I fell in love with was Dorothy’s young son, Ray, played by Jonathan Lipnicki. Lipnicki’s role stole my heart from the beginning of the movie. Maguire’s relationship with Ray was in my opinion the best part of the whole movie. With this being my second year taking cinematography, I have started to realize how big of an impact what I’ve learned has had on the way I watch films. I have noticed that I view films different now that I’m watching with a critical eye and searching for things I’ve been taught. For example, I never would have noticed the lighting of the shots, the music choices that were made, how sports games are filmed, and the camera angles. For example, in the airport, when Dorothy is scolding her son for disappearing, the camera is close up on his face from the angle that she would be looking down at him, and vice versa. This is a small detail that I would never have noticed without taking this class. One interesting thing that I found out from researching the logistics of how this movie was made, was that the movie was shot in four months on more than 70 locations in the Los Angeles area. I read about how much detail went into creating the office building set, making each desk look like someone’s life, with personal pictures and office supplies, and how the SMI complex occupied nearly every inch of Sony Stage 23. This much detail was put into a set that was only filmed for a few scenes of the movie. I would 10/10 recommend this movie for anyone that loves both sports and romantic movies. I believe I learned a lot more from just analyzing this movie and I can’t wait to explore more.