George Clooney is often compared to Cary Grant. Yet, despite the similarities in style, Clooney has rarely ventured into the sort of screwball romantic comedies that made Grant such an icon. His closest effort was Intolerable Cruelty, which failed to capture an audience, as most viewers mistook the Coen brothers’ over-the-top style for outright mockery. For his third directorial outing (after the clever Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and the stellar Good Night, and Good Luck), Clooney has chosen to immerse himself in a bit of nostalgic romance and some old-fashioned shenanigans.
 Clooney lobs a comic Hail Mary to John Krasinski in his new footballs-and-funnies flick, Leatherheads. |
Leatherheads takes us back to the roaring ’20s, when professional football was in its infancy. At the time, college football was all the rage, with popular players packing stadiums without fail. Professional football, on the other hand, was seen as a folly for aging athletes. Clooney casts himself as one of the latter, the captain of the motley Duluth Bulldogs. Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly loves football. Unfortunately, the relationship is not reciprocal. The Bulldogs are so cash-poor they can’t even afford a new game ball.
Dodge has a moment of major inspiration, though, when he spots Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski, still day-laboring at “The Office”). Carter is the star of Princeton’s winning team, and a hero of the first World War, to boot. He’s even got his own protean endorsement deals. But he’s about to graduate and head off into the real world. Dodge proposes a radical idea: draft this kid into the majors, and drag his thousands of fans along with him.
| Trailer for Leatherheads. |
In the mid-’20s, professional football was a bunch of miners and war veterans bashing into each other in turnip fields. There weren’t even any formal rules to the game. Leatherheads revels in this wild-and-woolly time period, taking it to the end zone with a ragtime beat and an authentic, Depression-Era look. First-time screenwriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly even manage to nail the classic tennis volley dialogue of Ben Hecht (His Girl Friday, The Front Page) and George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story, Adam’s Rib).
Leatherheads tries to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. While Carter is being drafted into the big leagues, promising lots of sporty action, audiences are also introduced to Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), a moxie-filled Chicago reporter spoiling for a big story. She thinks she’s nailed it when a soldier shows up at her office claiming Carter Rutherford’s heroic war story isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Lexie figures she’ll pen a few laudatory stories about Carter, then drop the boom on the guy. Naturally, she starts to fall for him. At the same time, our man Dodge starts to fall for Lexie, setting up a tidy little love triangle.
Yes, Zellweger’s last football-centric romance, Jerry Maguire, was also accused of splitting its time between chick-flick romance and hard-hitting sports action. Leatherheads features about the same ratio. But Clooney and his staff get credit for sacking expectations. There are no good guys or bad guys here, and it’s never quite clear how things will play out. Convention dictates that Dodge kick off a contentious rivalry with the young, handsome and talented Carter. But he doesn’t. He knows that Carter is the last, best hope for his team. Admittedly, the sports, the romance, the history and the wistful drama make Leatherheads a bit schizophrenic. But captain Clooney leads by example, making it a ragtag charmer through and through.—Devin O’Leary
