Fumble! Clooney doesn't put many points on the board in 'Leatherheads'

Comedy takes all the fun out of football

By Robert Denerstein, Special to the Rocky

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Studios

George Clooney plays an aging football player circa 1925, and Renee Zellweger is a reporter out to expose one of his teammates in Leatherheads.

Leatherheads stars George Clooney, left, and John Krasinski.

Leatherheads, a comedy about the early days of professional football, proves that even golden boy George Clooney can't score every time he carries the ball.

Clooney, who both directs and stars, tries for the robust spirit of bygone movie days but runs out of gas in the second half.

Set in 1925, Leatherheads mixes football rough-and-tumble with a classic yarn about a newspaper reporter who tries to get the goods on a purported war hero.

To add more fuel to its fire, Leatherheads also ignites romantic sparks between Clooney, as an aging footballer, and Renee Zellweger, as a savvy reporter who knows her way around a wisecrack.

Clooney, who's equally skilled in the art of repartee, portrays Dodge Connolly, the main man on the Duluth Bulldogs. Zellweger plays Lexie Littleton, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Although many of their scenes together have the pleasing snap of well- rehearsed routines, they don't always convince. They can feel like acts of mimicry (of dozens of old movies) rather than the real thing.

Screenwriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly (a Denver-based national sports columnist and novelist) do a nice job of setting the stage, taking us back to the time when college football dominated and professional football was widely regarded as a joke.

The situation begins to change when Princeton hotshot and World War I hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski of The Office) signs to play with the Bulldogs.

Suddenly, a moribund league gets a new lease on life. We're asked to believe that Rutherford's wartime heroics have enough icon-making potential to bring interest in pro football to a commercial boil. Rutherford's agent (Jonathan Pryce) is a human harbinger of greed to come.

Leatherheads may not be trying for anything especially meaningful, but about halfway through I began to wonder precisely what it did want to achieve.

The movie's various story lines can't generate enough interest to rival Clooney's earlier directorial efforts: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night, and Good Luck.

On top of that, the ending fizzles. Even a couple of the characters are forced to admit that they're bored by the climactic game between Duluth and Chicago, played in mud so thick you can't tell the teams apart. The script evidently wants to make points about the deadening effect of rules, but the movie is deadened in the process.

Too bad. Early on, Leatherheads looks as if it's going to bristle with amusing detail and minor historical revelation, and Randy Newman's score - coupled with well-chosen period music - is fun.

But as the movie thumbs through a catalog of screwball- comedy ploys, its potential increasingly feels squandered.

I'm not familiar with Brantley, but Reilly is widely regarded as a smart and funny writer, and Clooney has plenty of credibility in the smarts department himself. Maybe that's why Leatherheads seldom wants for engaging, smart-alecky bravado.

After a while, though, you may find yourself wondering whether that's all it has.

Leatherheads

Romance and heroes in pro football's infancy.

* Grade: C+

* Rated: PG-13

* Running time: 112 minutes

• April 4, 2008

  9:53 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  featherrock writes:

  What did you expect from a liberal like cluless Clooney? Lioberals lack heart and so do their movies.

• April 4, 2008

  1:52 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  coslor writes:

  Tell you what, featherrock--you don't assume that all liberals are like George Clooney, and I won't assume that all conservatives can't spell.

• April 4, 2008

  5:40 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  featherrock writes:

  Good one coslor