But then the platitudes hit, delivering to Maguire his comeuppance and, miraculously, saving the movie. What follows is manipulative, but it works. Partly it's the performances. This is Cruise's best; he's an actor, no doubt about it. And relative newcomer Renee Zellweger has one of the most expressive faces in movies today.

Mostly, though, it's due to Cameron Crowe's uncanny knack for pushing the envelope of sentiment just far enough to be manipulative but not so much that you notice or mind it. Then he backs off just in time with a self-depreciating irony or a punch line that somehow renders his shamelessness forgivable. Jerry Maguire is a lot softer than Crowe's brilliant, overlooked debut, Say Anything, but it's sharper and darker than anything he's done since then, and the combination of sentimental fluff and self-deflating edge makes it a movie you hate to love but thoroughly enjoy all the same.

The fatal platitudes come in the form of a "mission statement" that Jerry writes for his company, Sports Management International, in a single frenzied night after receiving the revelation that his profession has become dehumanized, ruthless, and greedy (earlier in the day a kid gives him the finger after Jerry insists that the boy's dad should continue playing hockey even though the guy is being hospitalized with his fourth concussion). Called "The Things We Think And Do Not Say," it contains groaners every bit as bad as the title. "I'll admit what I was writing was a little touchy-feely," Jerry says in understatement.

The next day, his office mates give him a round of applause. Secretly, though, they know he's doomed. It's a true mission impossible. Although in the real world the statement's new-agey, self-help rhetoric would have gotten him a stint as a daytime talk-show host or at least a book contract, here its essential message -- fewer clients, less money, more human contact -- gets him canned. In a scene that balances black humor and pathos, Jerry confronts his office mates and appeals to their decency and for their support. It's a hilarious and unnerving rendition of a man in extremis -- compare it to Cruise's bathetic histrionics in Born on the Fourth of July. "Who is coming with me?" he challenges.

Of course, the only one who does is the adorable Dorothy Boyd (Zellweger), the meek office accountant who has admired him from afar and has been moved by his mission statement. Despite her being a single mother, despite the doubts as to Jerry's sanity, she marches out with him. Meanwhile, Jerry loses his fiancée and all but one of his clients to his treacherous protégé, Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr).

That one client is Rod Tidwell (a rambunctious, sometimes overbearingly so, Cuba Gooding Jr.), a talented wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals who's relegated to the lower salary echelons because he's a "shrimp" with "an attitude." No wonder Jerry bonds with him and tries to show him he cares. "Show me the money!" is Tidwell's too often bellowed response.

What follows is predictable, the ways of love and friendship and underdog struggles and cute kids in Hollywood being what they are. But Crowe and company pull it off with a wink and a prayer -- a sly self-parody and also a trace of genuine belief in what it's preaching. Not that the film doesn't have its share of gag-inducing moments. Jerry spends so much time bonding with Dorothy's weird and seemingly brain-damaged son Ray (Jonathan Lipnicki) that the movie seems about to turn into a juvenile version of Rain Man. A more serious problem is the attempt to stuff Jerry with all the dilemmas that a contemporary guy faces -- friendship versus intimacy, ambition versus loyalty, commitment versus getting rich and having a good time. "I think in this age optimism like that is a revolutionary act," Dorothy declares about Jerry's statement. Jerry Maguire is at its best when it doesn't take such sentiments seriously, when it remembers that its real mission is entertainment.