Combining drama, comedy, and romance, Jerry Maguire was a critical and commercial success built on an original script by writer/director Cameron Crowe and an Oscar-nominated performance by Tom Cruise. Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is an agent with a major sports management firm. Hes enthusiastic, successful, a great negotiator and people like him. But it begins to dawn on Jerry that theres something wrong with what hes doing, and not long after a troubling encounter with the son of an injured athlete he represents, Jerry has a serious crisis of conscience. In the midst of a sleepless night, Jerry writes a memo calling on himself and his colleagues to think more about the long-term welfare of the clients they represent and less about immediate profits. While everyone around him applauds the sentiment, Jerrys superiors think his ideas are bad for business; Jerry is fired, and, rather than standing in solidarity with him, his friends in the firm scramble like sharks to claim Jerrys clients. At the end of his last day, the only people willing to join Jerry as he strikes out on his own are staff accountant Dorothy (Renee Zellweger), a single mother secretly in love with Jerry, and Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a football player whose pride and arrogance have gotten in the way of his reaching his potential. Jerry Maguire earned an Academy Award for Cuba Gooding Jr.s performance as Tidwell and provided a breakthrough role for Renee Zellweger; it also made Show me the money! an unavoidable catchphrase for several months. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide