Tom Cruise somehow manages to portray an over-confident and hyper-active guy with great teeth

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2002)

LIke that other big budget, high-gloss exercise in subservsion, "Fight Club", this big budget, high-gloss movie is packed with perfect-looking people claiming to be fighting for freedom, individuality, the common man, the little guy, truth, justice and the American Way. This kind of film is much more palatable when all concerned are unbelievably gorgeous and dentally superior to the rest of us mere mortals. "Fight Club" would not have been nearly so attractive a proposition if the Brad Pitt role had been taken by Steve Buscemi. Likewise, "Jerry Maguire" would have its work cut out if its central role were played by Danny Devito. It's so much easier to be subversive if you are charismatic and physically perfect.
For the record, Tom Cruise plays the eponymous sports agent, who suffers a crisis of conscience and decides to go it alone, and be, y'know, a better sports agent. And hey, if that means making millions of dollars along the way, so be it. Yeah, I know, sounds pretty awful doesn't it? Sounds like the kind of movie that makes you want to slash the seats and torch the cinema. And yet, somehow, it transpires that Cameron Crowe has managed to write a witty, fast-paced, character-driven script and directed it with such verve and style that all criticism seems redundant. He's very good at this sort of thing. Like his more recent "Almost Famous" this is the kind of film you thought they didn't make any more: Hollywood Bollocks, yes, but the kind of HB you don't mind. In fact, the kind of HB you wish would never end. All the performances are excellent, meaning that Mr Cruise has now, to the best of my knowledge, appeared in a grand total of three good movies (I've not seen "Vanilla Sky" yet): "Color (sic) of Money", "Magnolia" and this. When you compare this with the rest of his oeuvre, okay, the duds outweight the gold nuggets by about five to one, but even so. Renee Zellweger, meanwhile, proves she can play Americans almost as well as English people, with her fine portrayal of the plucky Dorothy. Her kid has too much sticky-up hair and annoying glasses, but otherwise he's okay. Cuba Gooding Jr (a name to conjure with. Has he got a brother called Chile? A siter called Argentina?) gives the performance he seems to be spending the rest of his career recovering from. He's on top form here, as the enthusiastic American footballer who stands by Jerry, for all the right reasons. The scenes with his family watching him, anxiously waiting for him to get up from what looked like a crippling injury are both heart-rending and hilarious. Which would seem to be Crowe's speciality - tugging at the heart strings and making you laugh, sometimes simultaneously. In the ever-more vacuous world of Hollywood, his brand of comedy/drama/whatever is more and more necessary.