One of my favorite movies ever

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 1999)

Jerry Maguire is one of my personal favorite films. Cameron Crowe's wonderful script and direction is full of nuances and subtleties that reward repeat viewings, and indeed gets better with each viewing.
Each scene of Jerry Maguire is so "perfect" that it looks like Cameron Crowe went to the kinds of lengths Stanley Kubrick did on that other Tom Cruise vehicle, the (awful) film Eyes Wide Shut. Of course Crowe did not try to achieve that kind of perfectionism, which leads me to believe his vision and talent were just so strong that he did not need to--he achieved as close to "perfection" as possible anyway.
Never has a role been more suited to Tom Cruise. And one realizes just how good Renee Zelwegger is when viewing her other performances (which are so utterly different from Dorothy Boyd), and seeing how she truly inhabits the character (I was convinced that Renee Z. was not "acting" and simply "was" a Dorothy Boyd-like character until I saw her other (mostly bitchy) prior roles).
I cannot give enough praise to Cameron Crowe's script. Jerry Maguire is such a true-to-life, three-dimensional character. I love that he does not always say the right thing. I have always found it slightly annoying that in big dramatic scenes, the main character always has the "perfect" line, retort, etc., whereas in real life we all know this rarely if ever happens. I love that Cameron did not give Jerry all the perfect dialogue--he fumbles and babbles, which for me kept him quite believable. (Until his "You complete me" line anyway.) God knows if this film had been written by the typical big-budget Hollywood "team" of writers, there would be no truly memorable lines like "you complete me" and "show me the money".
I love the Dicky Fox scenes dispersed throughout the main storyline. I wish the DVD version had indexed those scenes, because they are priceless.
The supporting cast is wonderful. Regina King is perfect (as always). Bonny Hunt as the older sister Laurel is delightful. Kelly Preston and Jay Mohr are brilliant and pitch perfect. And Cuba got an Oscar so nuff said there.
This is that rare Hollywood film with a unique artistic voice, and I greatly look forward to the next Cameron Crowe film.