LEATHERHEADS

Universal Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: George Clooney
Written By: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly
Cast: George Clooney, John Krasinski, Renee Zellweger, Stephen Root, Wayne Duvall, Peter Gerety, Keith Loreker, Malcolm Goodwin, Matt Bushell, Tim Griffin, Robert Baker, Nick Paonessa
Screened at: Lincoln Square, NYC, 3/31/08
Opens: April 4, 2008

If you’re one of those movie fans who have ignored anything shot before 1950, you haven’t seen the likes of Gregory LaCava’s “My Man Godfrey” (1936), W.S. Van Dyke’s “It’s a Wonderful World” (1939), George Cukor’s “The Philadelphia Story” (1940) or Ernst Lubitsch’s “That Uncertain Feeling” (1941). You’re missing quite a bit, but don’t despair. You’ll get the idea of what these screwballs comedies were like by taking in George Clooney’s “Leatherheads,” which copies a subgenre that features mistaken identities sometimes cross-dressing (consider Jack Lemmon’s impersonation of a woman, Daphne, in Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder’s “Bringing Up Baby” (1938) and George Cukor’s “Holiday” (1938); couples who are mismatched and are initially hostile to each other; and fast-talking repartee. George Clooney, who directs and acts as principal character in “Leatherheads,” revives the good memories of moviegoers over a certain age while introducing youths to the ways of screwball comedies, particularly in the witty exchanges between a mismatched couple played by Clooney and Renee Zellweger. And “Leatherheads” works quite well as a period piece situated in the year 1925, with allusion to Prohibition, Model T’s and facsimiles thereof, World War One, the Charleston, and the way pro football was played seemingly without any rules. People got their news from daily papers, not from Fox News or CNN and drank more heavily than they did before Prohibition took effect.

The movie kicks off in high spirits, “Tiger Rag” in the soundtrack, and a bemused gaze by a lone cow on a field watching one grown man tackling another. During the 1920’s, twenty-five teams were listed in the National Football League, but we get the impression that the game was quite disorganized, at least on the post-college level. Clooney, broadening his directorial chops after “Good Night, and Good Luck” with a knock-down, drag-out fest, performs in the role of player Dodge Connelly, middle-aged but considered a grandpa by the sport, though despite his being in the mid-forties would obviously be thought desirable enough by the women. He has a hard sell to steal the heart of Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), who is decked out like a gorgeous character in a noir film with heavy red lipstick, flowing blond hair, considerable cleavage, a reporter who is at ease jumping on the desk of her editor, Harvey (Jack Thompson).

When Dodge convinces Princetonian Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to put his education on hold to join his Duluth pro team, Lexie is assigned to find a flaw in the handsome 23-year-old man’s war record. He claims to have single-handedly forced a German squadron to surrender: Lexie’s job is to flirt with the guy, get him to lower his guard, and reveal himself as a fraud. In that area she is opposed by Dodge, who desperately needs this pigskin star on his team.

Photographer Newton Thomas Sigel captures considerable playing on and off the field, particularly in shots of a game between Duluth and rival Chicago on a wet and muddy field—one in which both teams accumulate so much dirt on their uniforms that telling them apart becomes an impossible task. As a new commissioner (Peter Gerety) is appointed by Congress, the freewheeling, anarchistic days of the pigskin sport are over, with rules designed to take some of the fun out of the sport, injunctions that apply to this very day.

Clooney may not be George Cukor but does an admirable job as the film’s director and as his team’s coach and captain. The romantic scenes between the forty-six year-old actor-director and the thirty-eight-year old actress are credible though, not so the attraction between Ms. Zellweger and the twenty-eight-year old John Krasinski. The picture serves nicely as a homage to the early days of pro football in America (the collegiate game had been established for a while), a sprightly concoction of sports, romance, and an evocation of the period.

Rated PG-13. 114 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online