SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Cameron Crowe's inherent affability leads him to suspect anything that isn't a shade of roses. Thus his movies, because we're not living in the "Leave it to Beaver" era, give off a Stepford vibe. They're chock-full of men and women afraid to trod on one another's toes; voices, meanwhile, are never raised except in pursuit of audience laughter, and an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" song was used in Almost Famous to evoke the '60s! The darkness peeks through on occasion, but Crowe doesn't know what to do with it--and so, like irony in his work, it gets placed between quotes. (In Say Anything...'s DVD commentary, Crowe says that when first confronted with the anger that John Cusack brought to the character of Lloyd Dobler, he asked Cusack to "smile more.") He keeps slackening tension with facile punchlines, keeps spoon-feeding us a paradigm of decency that he hopes we'll keep down.

In Say Anything..., we meet an amateur kickboxer (Cusack's Dobler) whose goal for the summer after high school graduation is to spend as many days as possible with valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye), the heretofore-unattainable girl of his dreams. Wriggling his way into her life after she accepts his invitation to a party and enjoys herself, Lloyd tries hard to impress Diane's father (John Mahoney), a man who sets up subtle roadblocks for the burgeoning couple because he wants the proverbial "best" for his daughter. (Having raised her alone, Diane's dad is the only person in whom she confides after sleeping with Lloyd; the title refers to not only Lloyd's boundless patter but also the implicit bond Diane shares with Mr. Court that permits them to "say anything" to each other.) He senses that Lloyd, should separation anxiety get the best of him, is charming enough to dissuade Diane from attending college abroad come the fall.

Say Anything..., Crowe's directorial debut (he had already scripted Fast Times at Ridgemont High and its quasi-sequel, The Wild Life), lays out building blocks that are rearranged to much the same effect in Jerry Maguire, although Say Anything... is the preferable, lower-key film, with an epilogue on a plane that Crowe may never trump. (Airplane cabins, for what it's worth, are a motif of Crowe's work--he seems to enjoy staging pivotal encounters aboard them, providing as they do a confined, inescapable space that lends itself to confrontation. In Jerry Maguire, it's used in another way: to introduce the class struggle of heroine Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger).) Say Anything... remains a post-John Hughes innovator as a teen flick that ducks both Afterschool Special-isms and crass humour. It is, in other words, neither crazy/beautiful nor Get Over It.

But Say Anything... doesn't...say anything special in alternative. It's a repository for dating tips that makes kissy faces at us. I like the film, particularly Mahoney's complex portrayal of the well-sketched Mr. Court, yet its ultimate achievement is that it doesn't feel as disingenuous as Crowe's Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, or, especially, his pièce de bullshit Vanilla Sky. Tom Cruise flirts with playing an everyman in Jerry Maguire as a sports agent fired from his firm for writing a controversial memo--er, "mission statement" (oh-so preciously titled "The Things We Think But Do Not Say")--and struggling to scale his way back to the top with a single client, football star Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), on his roster. Cruise, however, lacks the necessary pathos as an actor--romantic and social dilemmas are reduced to hangnail status when you have the teeth and (albeit synthetic) charisma of a comic book artist's immaculate conception. When Jerry's luminescent gal-pal Dorothy threatens to end their relationship, citing his absence of affection, you know it won't take two words from The Chiselled Greek to rekindle the spark they once had. Indeed, Dorothy interrupts Jerry's climactic apology to tell him, "You had me at 'Hello.'"

Of Crowe's films, Say Anything... and Jerry Maguire were the two overseen by brainy James L. Brooks, producer of "The Simpsons" and director of As Good As It Gets. They bear Brooks' stamp in their cluttered execution: Brooks' pictures tend to be star vehicles with an ensemble ethos--his supporting actors get face time comparable to the lead's. If this results in a bloated product (As Good As It Gets runs two-and-a-half hours), at least every subplot informs and/or textures the hero's arc. Crowe's not a fluid enough filmmaker to pull off this trick: his sidebars involving lower-tier cast members are the indulgences of a man with less vision than heart. Dorothy's sister (Bonnie Hunt) and "nanny" (Todd Louiso), for example, serve an identical function in Jerry Maguire, which is to tell Jerry to respect Dorothy--Crowe can't resist an opportunity to tell you how important it is to be nice. (One might say that his films are about the things we say but do not think.) Jerry Maguire earned a spot on my Top 10 of 1996; I was hoodwinked and bamboozled by its and Cruise's perfect smile, though I concede that Gooding (in an Oscar-winning performance) and Zellweger ring true, and the signature "Show Me the Money!" sequence crackles.

Say Anything... and Jerry Maguire are now available on DVD in Special Editions from Fox and Columbia Tri-Star, respectively. The former contains a fine 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer with stronger colour and contrast range than that of previous home video versions, although the filmstock shows its age. The Dolby Digital 5.1 remixed sound is equally inoffensive--and not quite memorable. Be sure to select the aforementioned commentary from the main menu as Crowe, Cusack, and Skye engage in a 20-minute overture, if you will, before the film begins that is inaccessible by toggling the audio tracks alone. During this fabulous preface, Crowe discusses the seeds of the project and the casting of Cusack and Skye, and so the trio has a rapport rekindled by the start of the film proper. And with the backstory out of the way, they are free to be screen-specific in their remarks.

Five outtakes (labelled "alternate scenes"), ten deleted scenes, and nine extended scenes, all anamorphically enhanced, reveal Crowe's oft-suppressed economical side. One is perhaps happiest to discover that Fishbone's corny "Turn the Other Way" was not the song used in Lloyd's boombox serenade of Diane, and that we were spared a gauzy montage straight out of Love Story. (Fans of Lili Taylor's "Corey," note that she has an additional song ("He Hurts Me") among the omissions.) A 7-minute featurette on the production from 1989 with unintentionally funny, clinical narration, two trailers and eight TV spots for Say Anything..., and "Cameron Crowe's personal photo gallery" of production stills (which accompany the pre-commentary like a slideshow) round out the single disc release.

Jerry Maguire: Special Edition, packaged in a gatefold with a cardboard slipcover, spreads its supplements out over two platters. Disc One carries the lighter load, with no extras besides an event commentary. Before we go there, I must lavish praise on the extraordinary 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer: I never saw Sony's original, bare-bones DVD, but as it was one of the studio's earliest forays into the format, I can't imagine the authoring was this invisible or the colours this controlled. To boot, the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, registering a couple of notches above reference volume, sounds wonderful. Although there is not often a whirlwind of activity in the split-surrounds and the subwoofer is under-employed, the "Show me the money!" duel and final football match utilize the entire six-track soundstage.

As for that "event" yakker, Cruise, Zellweger, Gooding, Jr., and Crowe gathered together to record it; unfortunately, the result is a dud. As we see in footage of this historic assembly on Disc Two, they are too often distracted by Jerry Maguire to react usefully; what commences promisingly with a Billy Wilder anecdote (Crowe, author of Conversations with Wilder, wanted the late, great director for Jerry Maguire's mentor Dicky Fox) devolves into a series of squeamish silences. Cruise also happens to speak in the muffled tones of the masked David from Vanilla Sky--maybe it's those braces of his.

Disc Two offers an hour's worth of video from the feature commentary session, plus five extraneous trims (of interest: yet another in-flight confrontation) and three grainy glimpses into the rehearsal process, all with worthwhile commentary from Crowe and editor Joe Hutshings; a Rod Tidwell endorsement that's so convincing a parody of mid-nineties-era Nike commercials it's unsettling; "How to Be a Sports Agent" (4 mins.), a homespun short in which real-life Jerry Maguire Drew Rosenhaus lists the essentials for success (prepare to laugh when he explains the purpose of a cell phone and a laptop, though bear in mind that this was probably shot in 1994 or early '95); a 7-minute "making-of," which ends with interviews with pro-football players; Bruce Springsteen's video for "Secret Garden" (a song that also provides background music for the second DVD's menus); 'Jerry Maguire's' mission statement, reproduced as on-screen text that goes on for pages; trailers for Jerry Maguire and As Good As It Gets; a rather sparse photo gallery, needlessly divided into five sub-categories; and a DVD-ROM script-to-screen interface that gives aspiring screenwriters something to Crowe about.-Bill Chambers

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