Category: Jerry O’Connell

JERRY MAGUIRE

By Marc S. Sanders

Writer/Director Cameron Crowe loves all of the characters he creates.  He loves them so much that I bet he’s got volumes of background histories on each one ranging from a nanny – sorry Au Pair – to a cute seven-year-old kid to a brash, hot shot professional sports agent like Jerry Maguire.  Everyone, absolutely EVERYONE, in Crowe’s films has to have a substantial amount of dialogue to bring them attention.  Often it works.  Yet, it’s also his Achille’s heel. 

Roger Ebert called Jerry Maguire a very busy picture and I could not agree more.  Do not mistake me.  I’m quite fond of the film, but yeah, Cameron Crowe unloads a lot in its over two-hour running time.  The title character, played by Tom Cruise in one of his best roles, is the superstar agent who has everything going for him.  He’s engaged to a beautiful talent scout named Avery (Kelly Preston), he has a knack for negotiating the best contracts for the greatest up and coming athletes, and he’s loved – strike that…adored by everyone.  Well…not everyone.  A hockey player’s kid tells him to eff off after his dad suffers his fourth concussion and can barely recognize his family or remember his own name.  It’s only then that he has a revelation in the middle of the night to document a multi-page memo inspiring his colleagues to sidestep the need to make more money. Less clients, and more personal attention to the ones you represent.  Call for everyone in his firm to get behind him in this mentality.  Jerry Maguire will be their martyr.

Well, that gets him fired, and ultimately he’s deemed a loser which is something that poor Jerry cannot learn to live with comfortably.  His one last hope at redemption lies in a promising wide receiver named Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr – in a still very memorable role, likely the greatest of his career).  Rod remains committed to sticking with Jerry, but that is not going to make it easy.  He’s often uncooperative.  His pregnant wife, Marcy (Regina King) will not stand for any BS.  Rod is more concerned with obtaining the million-dollar contract, and it takes every last breath of Jerry’s to convince his client that it starts with getting back to just loving the game.

There is also another chance for Jerry to try his hand at love.  Wait, is it love, or is it that Jerry cannot handle being alone?  The test will lie in his relationship with his assistant Dorothy (Renee Zellweger in her breakthrough role), a twenty-six-year-old widow with the cutest kid (Jonathan Lipnicki, impossible not to fall in love with) for a son and a divorced sister named Laurel (Bonnie Hunt) who only has the support of her crying, pessimistic divorced wives support group.

Are you catching on yet to what Roger Ebert was trying to say?  There’s a lot of ingredients to make this stew.  Fortunately, all of it is good material with a great cast, but they are all distractions for one another as well.  At times there seems to be three movies going on at once.  Jerry the agent needs to get back on the horse.  Rod needs to humble himself and listen to his agent.  Dorothy needs to decide if this handsome guy who is the spitting image of Tom Cruise is best for her while she’s trying to be a single mother with a seven-year-old. 

The kid’s Au Pair has ten pages of dialogue.  Marcy has fifteen.  Avery has maybe five, but that’s quite a lot too.  It feels like Laurel and her divorced wives group have fifty pages.  Then there is the jerky antagonist who fired Jerry played Jay Mohr.  There’s just a lot of stuff here.

Jerry Maguire is a well-made film with a natural, feel-good comedic approach.  Cameron Crowe has feelings for all of his characters.  I think he doesn’t even want the Jay Mohr character to get hurt.  Crowe just wants to cradle everyone and kiss them goodnight and give them all a big part in the school play.  It’s a blessing the cast has terrific chemistry.  Anyone sharing a scene with Tom Cruise is doing brilliant work, especially Renee Zellweger and Cuba Gooding Jr.

Crowe’s dialogue might feel schmaltzy during the love story aspect, but it’s captivating.  Cuba Gooding Jr performs like he wrote the character, not Crowe.  He must have invented more to his Oscar winning portrayal of a cocky wanna be football star than the writer could have ever imagined.  “Show me the money!!!!” is still hailed as an all time great scene, chartered by the actor. 

As a director, Cameron Crowe is doing some of his best work.  I recently watched the movie with my Cinemaniac pals and noted to them how much lighting is pointed at the handsome faces of the cast.  It could be Cruise making a negotiation with a promising football star and his no nonsense dad (Jerry O’Connell, Beau Bridges) around a coffee table, or it could be a seductive scene between the romantic leads on a porch.  You never saw so many faces with flawless complexions and the photography of the film looks great from beginning to end.

As overstuffed as Jerry Maguire is, the film ultimately belongs to Tom Cruise, and he delivers Cameron Crowe’s character arc beautifully.  It is such a dynamic portrayal with a lot for Jerry to redeem, learn from and surmise.  The conceit I expect from Cruise is evident.  Sure!  However, it is still a well-constructed portrayal. 

This movie makes me yearn for Tom Cruise to seek out those roles that would come from nowhere and with surprise.  The roles that on the surface never seem like he should be occupying.  Think about this for a second.  This guy has played the seductive Vampire Lestat which was initially poo poo’d by Anne Rice.  He was crippled Vietnam War veteran/protestor Ron Kovic, soon after he played fighter pilot Maverick.  He played the cruelly extreme chauvinistic motivational speaker Frank TJ Mackey amid another crowded cast of exceptional talents and characters. He’s also portrayed Jerry Maguire.  The range of this actor’s talent can only be stretched further and further.  I’d rather know what wonderous role Tom Cruise has in store next, rather than what ridiculous stunt he wants to accomplish for another Mission: Impossible set up. 

Jerry Maguire is a gluttonous picture, but fortunately every entrée is served with heart, genuine emotion, and relatable caricatures.  It’s one of Cameron Crowe’s best films.

STAND BY ME

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m not embarrassed to say it.  I’ve experienced a mid-life crisis.  Last night, I watched Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, and I absolutely broke down in tears when it finished.  As I approach age 50 later this year, the most recent viewing of this film alerted me that my childhood memories are further away than I ever realized before. 

Reiner lifts this coming-of-age story from Stephen King’s novella entitled The Body. Four boys spend the long and hot dog days of summer in Castle Rock, Oregon (it was Maine in King’s story) in their tree house smoking cigarettes and discussing important topics like Annette Funnicello’s breast size on The Mickey Mouse Club and the recent disappearance of a twelve-year-old kid.  Yackety Yak and Lollipop play on their transistor radio in the background.  The wimpiest one of the pack, Vern (Jerry O’Connell), overhears the location of the kid’s body is off the side of the railroad tracks, about twenty miles away.  Teddy (Corey Feldman), along with best friends Chris (River Phoenix) and Gordon (Wil Wheaton) decide to embark on the search for the body and get their picture in the paper, labeled as heroes.  It’ll take them the Labor Day weekend to carry out their quest.

During their long journey across the railroad tracks into the woods, the four boys will discover what concerns them, like figuring out if Goofy is a dog and who could win in a fight; Superman or Mighty Mouse.  As well, they’ll uncover what gives them anxiety ahead of their entry into adulthood.  Gordon lives with being unloved by his parents both before and following the accidental death of his older brother (John Cusack).  Chris lives with being unfairly labeled as a young hoodlum.  Teddy endures the aftermath of an abusive military father currently living in the looney bin.  Vern suffers from a hesitancy to live for adventure and risk due to ongoing fear. These boys had a future that awaited, but for some it seemed like there was no escaping the destiny the locals of their small town had already mapped out for them. 

In the last few years, I reconnected with a childhood friend by means of social media.  Visiting New York City annually over a three-year period, I got to see Scott in person and recollect on our times together.  It had been over thirty years since we had seen or spoken with one another.  We reminisced about tormenting the substitute teachers, and our first crushes.  We reflected on favorite movie scenes that we acted out in between classes.  We are different now, though.  Nowhere near the same as we were at age 12.  We have families and careers and responsibilities.  Yet, our memories of trading comic books, talking dirty, going to movies, and acting out cops and robbers shoot outs in the backyard all remain. 

When Stand By Me opens, a present day adult (Richard Dreyfuss) is shown reflecting in the distance following reading an article about a lawyer who was killed in a restaurant.  This narrator then flashes us back to the year 1959 when this adventure between him and his three friends occurred.  One of those friends was the lawyer who was killed.  A piece of his history has ceased to live and continue on.  That terrifies me personally.  Friends, and family, and people I’ve encountered over my half century will leave my presence, never to be seen or spoken to again.  I’ll never get the opportunity to reflect with them again, much less make new memories.  I’m now living in an age where Facebook comments seem to weekly consist of saying “very sorry for your loss.”  Friends are losing their parents.  Some are passing away themselves.

Stand By Me might not be altogether realistic.  The boys are getting overpowered by a sinister Kiefer Sutherland, who’s not afraid to use a switch blade and cut one of the kids’ throats.  King’s story also feels like an elevated Hardy Boys or Tom Sawyer kind of adventure.  I don’t know of anyone who went looking for a mutilated corpse during my summer days living in Wyckoff, New Jersey.  The adventure conceived by Stephen King serves as a thrill that you imagine as you read it off of the page.  My upbringing consisted of play dates and sleepovers with Scott, Star Wars toys and Saturday morning cartoons.  Yet, the connections that thread the main story together are what’s to treasure in Rob Reiner’s film.  The friends we make in grade school before becoming interested in high school, alcohol, sex, and career planning, are the most important people we know and first encounter in our lifetimes.  It’s impossible to forget them or the impact they had on our lives.  Scott certainly had an impact on my life.  I credit my sense of humor to him, and his carefree attitude to the ugliness of this world.  Sometimes that’s all we have to survive.

King and Reiner use the body that is being sought as a device to drive the characters.  What’s going to bring these boys together with no outside influence?  How can young Gordon deliver his revered sense of imagination as the writer he’s to become?  The best way is to put the boys around a camp fire.  Gordon can then entertain his pals with the story of an incredibly fat kid who got his revenge on the locals during a pie eating contest that results in a massive “Barforama.”  It’s silly and sophomoric and childish fun, but for 12-year-olds, it’s the best thing imaginable.  Teddy dreams of being an army hero storming the beaches of Normandy like his father was rumored to have done.  His sleeping bag is his machine gun mowing down an oncoming train.  Vern’s favorite food?  Watch the movie to find out.  Chris might be regarded as the outlaw, but he’s also the most mature, and perhaps the mentor to Gordon who suffers from the loss of the brother he loved, as much as he suffers from the neglect of his mother and father.  At age 12, in 1959, Chris was all that Gordon had.  I may have had more than Gordon at that age, but whenever I was with Scott, he’s all that I had.

Ultimately, Stand By Me is not an adventure or a silly comedy about boys being boys.  It’s a character study of kids just outside of their formative years.  It’s a film that captures a single moment before friendships inevitably expire.  It’s a reminder to embrace those you’ve treasured over your lifetime, because we cannot be twelve years old forever.