Jerry Maguire (1996)

Director: Cameron Crowe

Cast: Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., Renée Zellweger, Kelly Preston*

Have I Seen It Before: Sure. One of those “grown up” movies that was pretty near the top of the list of things to see for myself after people couldn’t stop me. My biggest memory of the early days of the film was in 1996 seeing the re-release of Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) at a second-run theater while my parents watched this movie. The reel broke in the middle of Empire, and I always thought I could hear George Lucas crying all the way from the ranch, and swearing to never let that happen again. I ask: Where’s the fun in that?

I never mentioned that in my review of Empire, and I wondered if that might be my last chance.

Did I Like It: There’s something magical in re-watching a film after many years and having it hit differently. It is heralded as a romantic comedy, and one of the greats of that genre, but it is far more at its core (and if you take away the famous “You complete me” scene, almost entirely**) about the need to unite the passion of what you do with the passion for who you’re with. It’s almost as if the workplace-drama as romantic comedy that Aaron Sorkin keeps whacking away at was finally perfected by Crowe early in his work.

I love my wife. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success. That’s really what the Joker should have been quoting, if you ask me.

*Not to speak ill of the dead, but do you suppose the vibe on the set is different when two Scientologists are sharing the same scene? A cynical question, perhaps, for a film that begs us to let go of our cynicism, but it weighs on my mind all the same.

**It’s absolute canon in The Dark Knight (2008) that the Joker (Heath Ledger) caught this movie at some point. That… had to be a strange screening. Then again, maybe he doesn’t watch movies at all, and the 1996 zeitgeist leaked into his brain, just like it did for everybody else. It was either refer to this or have him break out into the Macarena.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

Director: Michael Bay*

Cast: Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen It Before: Yes. I honestly can’t remember if I saw the film in theaters or later on home video. Considering in the the theater would be May of 2001, and on disc would have been December 2001, the movie would have played distinctly different in the spread of that half a year.

Do I have a memory of seeing it before? Not even in the slightest.

What could possibly go wrong?

Did I Like It: I’m about a minute and a half into this film when I first role my eyes, and I know I’m in for a long three hours. Another three minutes or so and I’m treated to the two main characters as children accidentally launching into flight in a crop duster. Between this and Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), was there a rash of kids accidentally taking flight in the late 1990s/early 2000s? I don’t remember that being a thing? Incidentally, I had enough material fro a review inside of the first half hour. Maybe I’ll add to it as the film proceeds**.

The movie proceeds from there positively groaning to strike a balance between Armageddon (1998)-style bombast and a legitimate docudrama about the world of 1941.

Guess which mode wins out?

Okay, so, at some point in the near future I’m going to have to build the skill of finding nice things to say about bad movies. It’s probably time to start here. Jennifer Garner is a delight as the nerdy, uptight friend of Kate Beckinsale. She should have been the lead, but she’s far more interesting in her few minutes of screen time than any of the other eye-candy women we have here.

That probably says more me than anything else, so I’ll just leave it there.

But let’s get back to a far more pertinent or profound question: Is there a rational reason to watch this film, when From Here to Eternity (1953) is perfectly available? If you’ve got an answer, then I will wait patiently for it.

And, no, “one is in black & white, and the other is in color” is definitely not a valid reason, in case you were wondering.

*I originally typed that as “Michael Nay” and got a deep enough chuckle out of that, it’s a solid bet it’s more entertaining than the rest of the film.

**I did(n’t?). For any of my other thoughts, probably best to go lookat my Letterboxd review. Haven’t we gone on long enough about this one?

As Good as It Gets (1997)

Director: James L. Brooks

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: Everyone loved it when it came out, pulling of the The Silence of the Lambs (1991) trick of sweeping both of the lead performers awards at the Oscars. No film has ever done it since. It’s occasionally heartwarming, often very funny, and there’s no reason why everyone wouldn’t have loved it.

I suppose the question in 2024 is, can it possibly hold up? Other celebrated films from the era—I’m mainly thinking of American Beauty (1999), but it isn’t precisely a 1:1 analogy—have been thoroughly dismissed as celebratory of our worst impulses. One would imagine that this film isn’t going to be immune from such considerations, when it is frequently both willfully and gleefully politically* incorrect.

And yet, I think there’s something telling in the fact that while the film did win those acting awards, it was completely cut out of any other attention in favor of Titanic (1997). The performances are key here. I’ve always said that more than any other movie star, Nicholson excels at portraying awfulness and charm simultaneously. He certainly had it as The Joker in Batman (1989) (although that would be a bit of a pre-requisite for the role), and I can only imagine what The Shining (1980) would have been without that quality**. So even now Melvin Udall (Nicholson) says and does deeply terrible things, you can’t help but be charmed somehow.

That wouldn’t be much to hang an entire film on anymore, though. The quality that makes the film still largely work when it might otherwise gone sour is the same quality that likely kept it from unqualified praise in the 90s. Yes, the role is tailor made for Nicholson’s talents, but the film does reach for a redemption for its characters, if even in small measures. Even if it wasn’t for love, Udall wants to be better. Will he succeed? Probably never nearly as much as the people around him might want, but if the horrors of the current age are ever going to abate, we might need to afford the assholes in our lives the grace to improve.

*You know what? I’m not thrilled with the amount of adverbs in that sentence, either.

**Likely something approaching the TV miniseries The Shining (1997), but I digress.

Rat Race (2001)

Director: Jerry Zucker

Cast: Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Cuba Gooding Jr.

Have I Seen It Before: Have I? I’m almost positive I haven’t. I’d remember it, right?

Did I Like It: I think there’s a certain dishonesty to a certain generation when they say that It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) is… oh, what’s the word…? good. The moment when a boomer got a hold of the rough concept, the first thing he did was chop down the running time by about half. I’m not sure a single comedy could ever successfully fill two VHS tapes. Billy Wilder understood it, Mike Nichols understood it. Even Kubrick—he being unafraid of a long film, to be sure—understood it.

Zucker understands it, too. Unfortunately, the film forgets to be funny in the meantime. Maybe Zucker didn’t get it, had a three-hour version of this film and chopped it to fit the modern sensibility.

I sat there stone-face aside from a few moments, which should open and immediately close the case on the film. One might argue I’ve been sleep deprived and wouldn’t have cracked a smile at Chaplin if he started churning out films again, but I’m submitting that the film is the one which is sleep deprived. The two biggest comedic beats of the movie are that John Cleese has improbably white fake teeth, and that Rowan Atkinson is sometimes very foreign, sometimes very sleepy, and occasionally both. Blink and you’ll miss whether or not Seth Green’s brother is foolish or pitiable, and if you’re thinking that deeply about this question, I would forgive you for neglecting to laugh. I sure did. I still don’t understand what Cuba Gooding Jr.’s problem is. Are football fans usually this worked up about the coin toss at the top of the game?

Also, Smash Mouth is there. They’re naturally hilarious. Ahem.