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Here is how Cuba Gooding Jr. is like John Travolta:
John Travolta enjoyed a brilliant and sustained flash of fame very early in his career; his role on Welcome Back, Kotter, followed up with films like Saturday Night Fever and Grease, made Travolta a '70s icon, as much a living emblem of the decade as the Village People or the Fonz. Then he had a few bad years, made more than a few bad films (Staying Alive, Two of a Kind, Twist of Fate, Perfect), the few bad years stretched out to a pretty bad decade, and soon Travolta was teetering on the edge of Wayne-Newton-style self-parody. Then, over the objections of his studio, Quentin Tarantino yanked Travolta from career purgatory and cast him in 1994's Pulp Fiction, and suddenly Travoltaville was back on the map. He made about four hundred movies in the next few years, scrambled back to the top of the A-list, and generally went about carefully rebuilding his monster-size ego, a project which culminated in the infamously terrible vanity bomb Battlefield Earth.
Cuba Gooding Jr. has had the same kind of career, albeit a miniature version. He also enjoyed a brilliant flash of fame early in his career. He starred in the powerful Boyz N the Hood in 1991, followed up with a supporting role in A Few Good Men, and was generally lauded far and wide. Then he had a few bad years, made a few bad films (Gladiator -- no, not the one with Russell Crowe, Judgment Night), and next thing you know, there he was in 1994's unfortunate Lightning Jack, playing a mute, uncomfortably Stepin Fetchit-esque sidekick to fellow career freefaller Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan. Then, Cameron Crowe yanked him from career purgatory and cast him as wide receiver Rod Tidwell in 1995's Jerry Maguire. Gooding shone. He won on Oscar. He launched a catchphrase. He, in short, showed us the money, and we were happy to see it. Then he had a few bad years, made more than a few bad films (What Dreams May Come, Instinct, Chill Factor) and suddenly Cuba Gooding Jr. seemed very much like a Vegas gambler who had won a big jackpot right off the bat, lost it all, then clawed his way back only to...lose it all.
Here is how Cuba Gooding Jr. is not like John Travolta:
John Travolta reacted to his improbable career renaissance by essentially shrugging and wondering what the fuss was all about (after all, in his mind, he had never gone anywhere, a strange-but-true fact confirmed by several of his Look Who's Talking? co-stars) and then coolly taking every part that came across his desk (for a more detailed assessment of the wreckage, please see this Fame Audit).
For his part, Cuba Gooding Jr. seemed genuinely thrilled to be back in the game, as evidenced by his famously exuberant Oscar acceptance speech, and has treated his new, post-Maguire lease on life as a chance to embark on a noble, if perhaps misguided, campaign to focus on playing Honourable Black Men Who Persevere. He played an Honourable Black Man Who Persevered in last year's Men of Honor. He played an HBMWP in his ludicrously brief cameo in this summer's Pearl Harbor. We're guessing -- we're praying -- that he's not playing an HBMWP in the upcoming Rat Race, which is a screwball ensemble comedy, and as such unlikely to feature much honour or perseverance.
We're glad that Lightning Jack wasn't the end of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s career. But his own true-life tale would be much more of a feel-good story if he weren't always trying so hard to make us feel good. Who knows how much of his role in Pearl Harbor was left on the cutting-room floor, excised in favour of last-minute reshoots feature doleful Japanese generals, but his part was so tiny and insipid that it had the exact opposite effect of what was intended: watching him stand all quivery-lipped over the coffin of the ship's dead white captain (their entire relationship having been explicated in a relatively luxurious forty-five seconds or so), then turning and giving that crisp little salute to Kate Beckinsale, was uncomfortably similar to watching him mutely shuck 'n' jive while carrying Paul Hogan's luggage.
We like Cuba Gooding Jr. We liked him in Boyz N the Hood, and As Good As It Gets, and, yes, Jerry Maguire. We want to see him play dignified men, and crazy men, and complicated men, too, and we think he can do all those things. We don't want to see him in movies about loony ape guys in prison, or biological weapons in ice cream trucks, or basically anything with Skeet Ulrich or Robin Williams. We certainly wouldn't be sad if we never saw him ever again playing a black man who bites his lip in the face of injustice, only to conquer the system in the name of equality. Which isn't too far off from how we feel about John Travolta, except without the "playing a black man who bites his lip in the face of injustice, only to conquer the system in the name of equality" part.
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