Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire is a feel-good movie where you should leave the cinema with a silly grin on your face. Due, mostly, to the superb performance by Tom Cruise (Maguire) who carries the movie along at a good pace.

Jerry is a rich, successful, sports agent with a very active sex life who becomes disillusioned with the people in his field of work. So as any (in)sane person would do, he spends a night writing a mission statement on how his business could be improved, describing a world where a kid can ask his idol for an autograph without endorsement deals and counter deals hurtling to the fore. This mission statement costs him his job and so on his last day with the firm he spends all afternoon trying to sign his clients to his name not his firm's name. He would have been successful except for an awkward customer, Rod Tidwell (Gooding). Maguire has to fight for this second rate footballer to be his client by yelling "Show me the money" in front of all his soon to be ex-colleagues, except for a love struck, single parent from accounts called Dorothy Boyd (the excellent Zellwegger) who decides to join Maguire's new little company.

Things don't go well as Maguire is screwed by ex-colleagues and clients. He ends up falling more in love with his partner's child than his partner, but ends up shagging and marrying her anyway. At this point in a film you normally can't stomach all the sugary scenes but Crowe manages to right the balance with some off-beat sensibility in such a way that scenes never go quite as you expect (watch out for the breakfast scene!).

Jerry Maguire has been wrongly labelled a "chick flick" so you guys who are wanting to impress those girls, take her to this film and you'll win brownie points and a have a good time too!

Meryl Brunnock