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Leatherheads
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: April 6, 2008

No, it's not a sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. George Clooney's new film Leatherheads is a romantic comedy set in the 1920s during the precarious formative years of professional football. The film is being pitched as a throwback "screwball comedy," and it does indeed offer a few slapstick botched laterals while the big band soundtrack rollicks through "Hold That Tiger." But Leatherheads is actually a tamer, more sincere film than its advertisers want you to believe. It induces consistent smiles but very few thigh-slappers, and by the way, large portions of the plot have nothing to do with football.

The story concerns an aging running back named Dodge Connelly (portrayed by Clooney) who, by 1925, is faced with the imminent failure of professional football. Unemployed and desperate, Connelly schemes to bring a college football star and war hero named Carter Rutherford into the league to boost attendance and galvanize investors. But Rutherford's war record has been greatly exaggerated by his publicist, and a wily and beautiful reporter named Lexie Littleton is chasing the truth behind his golden-boy facade.

The co-mingling agendas and irresistible charm of the above-mentioned characters leads to plenty of career-compromised romance. Thus for every flirtatious zinger, this film tends to offer a downbeat moment of personal conflict. What's more, there is a general melancholy hanging over this movie as Dodge comes to realize that legitimacy is a mixed blessing for the sport he has worked so hard to save. The league's newly established authorities begin immediately draining football of the chaos and gamesmanship that had previously been the source of so much fun.

Clooney's frequent gearing down of this film's tone shouldn't be a liability once the marketing machine has run its course and Leatherheads can be taken on its own terms. Indeed the drama gives the film a welcome measure of substance, while the handful of slapstick interludes still provide the nostalgia-flavored chuckles we were promised in the trailer. And by the way, it should be mentioned that the writers have crafted an ingeniously poetic ending to the film's climactic gridiron showdown.

Clooney continues to impress as an actor capable of both modern gravitas and old-fashioned banana peel silliness, and in this film, perhaps more than any other, he gets to work his dramatic, romantic, and comedic chops into one performance. Renée Zellweger, as the reporter Lexie Littleton, is perhaps not the ideal 1920s throwback actress, but she and Clooney, by film's end, manage some genuine and humorous chemistry. And John Krasinski is pitch-perfect as the affable superstar Carter Rutherford, who finds life as a commodity an unexpected bummer. Krasinski's career will be interesting to watch. He's so good and so dryly heroic on TV's The Office, one has to wonder just how far he can successfully stray from that potential pigeonhole. So far, so good, though.

Leatherheads is a quality film that will likely appreciate with age. Meanwhile, we should hardly be surprised to see George Clooney deliver a charming and casual product that is considerably more thoughtful than it appears, at first glance, to be. That's Clooney's career M.O., isn't it? Leatherheads doesn't hesitate to examine the dubious value of truth over mythology, and of prosperity over autonomy. If matters spiral into silliness along the way, all the better.

Copyright © 2008 Theo Michelfeld