For the last twenty plus years, I've heard "Show me the money!" and "Did you know that the human brain weighs eight pounds?" and seen Jonathan Lipnicki's weird face over and over. While there are some great things about Jerry Maguire, there are enough missteps that, for me, it just didn't live up to the hype. For the most part, the film is well acted. Cuba Gooding Jr. is terrific and Rene Zellweger does what she can with her role. The only person i can fault for their acting is Tom Cruise. I don't know what the Hell he's supposed to be doing most of the time. Maybe he doesn't understand human emotions, but he gets them wrong constantly. He's erratic and unstable in ways that aren't part of the character, but just Cruise being Cruise. Lipnicki isn't great, but I don't think he's ever really acting; he's just a kid being a kid and most of the time it works. The story is fun and heartfelt (and surprisingly hilarious when Cuba's on screen), but it's cliche, poorly paced, and just kind of ends. We get a resolution, but it feels like there should be another ten to fifteen minutes after the final scene. In a way, I'm glad there is not, because it's already too long, but it's like if The Office ended right after "Niagara"; you don't just end on the mountain top, you gotta show us at least part of the trek back down. There are moments that felt very real, but most of it was almost fever-dream levels of unrealistic. The two main relationships in the movie fluctuate way too fast and too often. It's like we're skipping steps between scenes. In some movies, that's not an issue, but Jerry Maguire is such a simple and grounded story for it to go off the rails so often. Jerry Maguire is a good movie, not great, but a solid, fun movie. My issues with it probably aren't even issues to a lot of people, but the pacing and Tom Cruise killed it a little for me. Stupid side note: look at Jonathan Lipnicki now; I'm glad to see he has grown into his face. He was a creepy little bastard in 1996.