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.