Leatherheads film review

certificate_PG

LEATHERHEADS

George Clooney has made few missteps in his career to date. Each time he's donned a new hat, whether it be a writer's one or a director's, they've all suited his handsome looks equally well. It appeared he could do no wrong. And then came Leatherheads. At times Clooney's natural charm and gleaming smile have got him through, masking the material's shortcomings, but even those tactics fail to save the lifeless Leatherheads. To borrow from one sports reporter in the film who's reflecting on a game, 'the worst part, [it's] boring.'

Clooney proved himself to be more than an accomplished director with the Oscar-nominated Good Night, and Good Luck, but although Leatherheads looks as stylish as the striking Good Night, there is nothing behind the elegant images rendered as they are in a muted palette. The script by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly lacks focus and substance. There are some snappy one-liners but essentially this screwball comedy just isn't screwy enough.

Set in 1925, Clooney plays Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly, a smooth-talking opportunist who is spending the waning years of a mediocre sports career leading the Duluth Bulldogs, a hapless member of the embryonic professional American Football league. When the team is wound up due to lack of funds, Dodge hatches a plan to lure Carter 'The Bullet' Rutherford (John Krasinski), the new young golden boy of college football, away from his successful Princeton team. In addition to his prodigious sporting talents, Rutherford is a national war hero having single-handedly forced a whole battalion of German troops to surrender.

When the Chicago Tribune newspaper is informed that perhaps Rutherford's heroism has been a little exaggerated, the ambitious reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) is dispatched to get the scoop. Littleton's mission becomes complicated when she finds herself the target of both Rutherford's and Connelly's romantic advances. With the pieces in place, the story should build from there, but instead it fizzles out, unsure of its tone and direction. Inevitably with sports films, events climax with a big game. Usually it's clear what's at stake and who you're rooting for, but in Leatherheads, that too is uncertain.