Jerry Maguire - 1996

Loved this movie when it first came out. Was curious to see how it stood up. In some ways, this is the most modern movie of this project so far. This current era of free agent sports is unlike the past in some important ways. The rise of the star agent is fairly new. And (to my tastes) repugnant. Ignoring the money side is my way of enjoying sports without the awful side stuff. This movie seems to agree with that. (That it spawned an HBO series on the life of a sports agent is the fault of HBO's vision, not this movie.)
The movie opens with Tom Cruise as sports agent Jerry Maguire. He suffers a crisis of conscience and writes a mission statement/memo to his company about the need to rehumanize, to accept fewer clients for less money. This leads him to be abruptly fired. In the race to see which of his clients he can keep he only ends up with two. The likely first pick of the NFL draft and a receiver for the Arizona Cardinals, Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr). His mission statement has also inspired one of his coworkers to go with him, the adorable Renee Zellweger. She's a single mom with one of the cutest kids in movie history.
The movie centers around two different relationships, Cruise and Zellweger and Cruise and Gooding Jr. Zellweger finds Cruise to be very pretty and a possible replacement for her dead husband. She manipulates him into feeling lonely and getting romantic with her. Out of fear that she'll leave, Cruise proposes and they become a family. Notice I didn't say a happy family. Father bonds with new son, but not really the mom. She eventually asks them if they can take a break from each other. He does and has an emotional response and returns. This is the "You had me at hello," scene. Only in this last viewing was I completely underwhelmed by this. They still have divorce in a year written all over them.
The friendship with Cruise and Gooding Jr, is much more interesting. It's part agent and client, part guy friends. Gooding Jr is very, very good. His memorable line here is, of course "Show me the money!". But the one that stuck with me was "You think we're fighting here, but I think we're finally talking!".
This is a very good movie. Great in spots and weak in others. Gooding Jr won for Best Supporting Actor (I agree) and Cruise was nominated for his acting (bit of a stretch). It should get some credit for being different than most Oscar noms.