Leatherheads is unusual because it's a football movie that doesn't seem like it likes or respects football at all. Odd, seeing how they got themselves a Superbowl spot.
In Leatherheads, football is just the unfortunate profession of its characters rather than the focus of the movie. It's definitely a romantic comedy first, a sports movie later-maybe-if-it-feels like it. The story takes place in 1925, when pro football was a joke with no rules and no audience, while college football was the bee's knees. "Going pro" after graduating college was considered absurd, because even the greatest athletes were supposed to grow up and get a real job. Here's where the film curiously lampoons football—or more accurately, the idea of professional football—as it tells the story behind the birth of the sport as we know it today.
Dodge Connolly (George Clooney) is a very smart man who ghostwrites for a newspaper via his drunken "reporter" friend Suds (Stephen Root). Yet at the age of 45, he has never held a job, because he's immature and all he wants to do is play football. In his quest to get paid for his hobby, he had assembled a group of miserable miners and farmers who'd all rather get paid cash for playing games than go to work. When their team, Duluth Bulldogs, loses their sponsor and goes broke, Dodge has to find a way to wiggle out of getting an actual job. His idea: get a celebrity to play and legitimize pro football in the public eye. This movie is both fictional and historically inaccurate, if you haven't figured that out yet.
The celebrity to do it is Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), a star college player and war hero, both of which made him the face of every marketable household product known to consumers. Sadly for him, hotshot reporter Lexi Littleton (Renée Zellweger) is assigned to confirm an accusation that Carter's brave war story was fabricated. A love triangle develops between Dodge, Lexi and Carter—taking up much of the story. Leatherheads is more concerned about the politics and economics behind football than the usual story of an underdog team/athlete/town, but treats those aspects lightly, like the Frank Capra version of Any Given Sunday.
Clooney shot Good Night and Good Luck in black and white to emulate the look of the era. Here he shoots the film as if it's an oldies screwball comedy. If grindhouse theaters showed Pillow Talk and His Girl Friday in the 70's, Tarantino and Rodriguez would've turned Leatherheads in last year. The dialogue is awesomely witty and snappy, but the delivery from the cast lacks the energy and fast pace of those old time comedies to really crack. In this age, there's a pressure for actors to stay believable to the audience even though it's supposed to be a farce, and that hampered the cast to really go at it. Clooney and Zellweger were more play-acting than acting. Clooney took on Cary Grant and Zellweger channeled… her character in Down With Love.
It is a funny movie, and there's plenty to like in the banter, but it goes on too long and tends to water itself down. Leatherheads is at its best during the slapstick moments, such as a truly zany scene where Dodge and Lexi knock out cops and steal their uniforms to escape being chased.
The strangest thing about this movie is that it pretends to be a sports movie to the very last minute, even though it's so obviously not. Twenty minutes before the movie ends, the climax has already been achieved—all the characters reach their end point. The subsequent "final match" that ends the movie is completely arbitrary; like it was tacked on just to trick people into thinking it's still a football movie. Also to make one last jab at the sport: it's boring.
Pro football, now with rules and regulations, is an officially conducted sport and therefore it\'s no fun anymore. To show this, Clooney shoots the final game as a lifeless activity, in contrast to the slapstick way he shoots the earlier games where the Bulldogs use their silly cons and tactics. Constant references are made to how it's not the same game anymore, and it has changed for the worse. The riding-into-the-sunset ending, then, suggests that the fun of the game has been taken away, and it's better to leave it all behind.
"Leatherheads" opens April 4, 2008 and is rated PG13. Comedy, Sports. Directed by George Clooney. Written by Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly, George Clooney. Starring George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Root.
