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Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous
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Does this make Fight Club brilliant or is Jerry MacGuire really brilliant? Neither? Don't judge me.
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Actually, I have more or less always felt that Jerry Maguire was sort of brilliant.
When it came out, I kinda resented the hard right turn into typical Hollywood romance land that the film takes about ⅔ of the way through. Mostly because the first half was really great from the get go... an almost Salingeresque take on the struggle of a single man to be genuine in an industry where conscience and integrity exist only as "pitches". Catcher in the Rye for the conscious capitalist, with a new yuppie breed of "phonies" existing in the space between other people's work and the money made by it.
The second half felt at first like a dim and predictable plot maneuver that didn't live up to the cleverness of the primary plot. But now I see it as a relatively realistic (for Hollywood) depictions of how "meant to be" partnerships actually tend to pan out especially when they revolve around someone as obviously confused and codependent as Jerry.
Yeah, it has a happy ending, and happy endings only occur in death. But the film grapples with some very real issues: Good men wanting to do the right thing, proposing for the wrong reasons to an underestimated woman he feels a misguided sense of responsibility for... guy really loves the woman's kid, or wants to love the kid, misinterprets random events for signs, and breaks a girl's heart. This shit happens. Happy endings do not.
That whole section of the film was tough for me for a long time. In real life, that "relationship" would probably have either fallen apart long before any vows were exchanged or all that unfocused passion and well-intentioned mutual admiration would have fizzled away into another loveless two bed marriage, and the kid would have been snorting oxys and throwing darts at pictures of his step dad's head by age 16.
But for a big time Hollywood romantic dramedy, Jerry Maguire is pretty much the best film that can be made using that very limited ingredients list. It does a better job than any others that come immediately to mind with the exception of The Graduate, and possibly Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The only thing I just can't swallow is that "you had me at hello" bit.
First of all, I don't know if anyone else was paying attention, but
motherfucket never said hello. Not at the beginning of that good-by-big-Hollywood standards speech, not at the beginning of their relationship. Never! You still hear that line come up in comedies and memes and word bubbles... "You Had Me At Hello" is one of the most quoted lines in the history of film. But 20 years later, O still have yet to see anyone point out this one simple fact. I've heard the argument that Zellweger's character was being deliberately cheesy, and a little cheeky, when she said that. And of course many people seem to think that the line is a universal code for "we good/it's ok/let's fuck" and that its an appropriate response to any accepted offer or plea.
Like this familiar bar scene..
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Guy in bar: Hey there, whatcha drinkin?
Lady in bar: vermouth on the rocks.
Guy: You look like you could use a refill.. May I?
Lady: you had me at hello
Both: *explosive laughter, flicked wrists (oh you!) and pointing at one another (yeah you know that one, we know that one.. ahh, we have a thing in common!)
[silence]
Lady: ... wanna do lines off my ass crack and fuck in the can?
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hey, I'd buy that if "you had me at hello" was already a romcom staple, and Zellweger's Dorothy was quoting, say, Casablanca or something, when she said it in the film. But it wasn't! Dorothy should have just said "shut up" and left it at that. Then she should have asked the
room full of clucking bitches to get the hell out of her house so she could talk to her damn husband.
Aside from that wholly unrealistic ending (Jerry's speech, while touching, also would be a no-fly in the real world), I have come to genuinely think of Jerry Maguire as a great film.