Sentimental and exploitative but it is very effective if you are in the mood for a romcom weepy

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2006)

Jerry is a sports agent and a very good sports agent at that. However when he suffers guilt at the nature of his business he proposed that his company take on fewer clients and put more personal care into them and prints up mission statements for all his colleagues. It isn't long before Bob Sugar is telling him that he is fired. Jerry decides to go it along but only manages to get two clients and one employee to come with him, but quickly even his small successes start turning into failure.
Famous for its success, its awards and its catchphrases, this film tends to be loved by a lot of people and hated by a lot of people as well. Now the truth is that it is more or less in the middle in terms of quality and it needs you to meet it on its turf because it won't be coming to meet you. I say this because the film rather coldly aims for its target audience and rarely misses a trick for squeezing out emotion from a moment. Few viewers seem to care that Jerry's epiphany doesn't really see him seeking happiness outside of the world of money but just seeking to chase it in a different way. Others ignore the fact that the central romance of the film seems to be built on slogans and weak spots and even more viewers accept the fact that the emotions and characters rarely run deeper than superficiality. Of course the only viewers that will really hate these things are the viewers that hate the film as a whole, because OK, it does all these things but it is ruthlessly effective in how it does them. You may not like the fact that it does it but you have to admit that it is very effective! It is hard to criticise it for what it does because it is so clear what it is aiming for and it really doesn't seem to be aspiring for much more than that. You can see this in the music, which is good but is used to maximum effect whenever it is needed (I love the Springsteen song but it is used with the subtlety of a sledgehammer) but nowhere moreso than the use of Lipnicki as the impossibly cute child who is never anything other than cute comments and toothy smiles. In fairness he goes as deep as Cruise himself does because he doesn't really go beyond the movie idol level. Sure he does some soul-searching of a sort but he rarely risks being anyone other than Tom Cruise. Zellweger is served up with a hard task and she can't manage it. She comes across as so weak and submissive that she makes their love even less convincing than the script already does. Gooding Jr is better than he has been since (although his career has sort of gone into freefall since this high) although his character is very much the sort of role he can easily play and not anything that deep or complex. Mohr, Hunt and King all fill in the edges.
Overall then a pretty manipulative and sentimental film that pushes all the buttons it can get in anyway it can. Some viewers will hate it for this while others (the majority it seems) will just accept it for what it is and embrace its easy emotion and cuddly billboard life messages and slogans. Very superficial and manipulative stuff then, but ruthlessly effective in its delivery.