MOVIE REVIEW: LEATHERHEADS

LEATHERHEADS

Leatherheads, starring and directed by George Clooney, is a bit like a hidden-ball play, where the audience spends half the movie looking for the point. Perhaps that’s being a little hard on what is ultimately a slapstick affair, but it is a big-budget movie and arrives with a great deal of fanfare. Moreover, football’s infancy is an era ripe for Hollywood’s attention. This movie simply doesn’t do it justice, and that’s a pity.

Let’s get one thing straight; George Clooney is a movie star. Not an actor – in this case emphatically not an actor -- but a movie star. He can fill a screen, charm an audience, and as a director he does a fair job of capturing an era. But his role as Dodge Connolly, an aging professional football player, is essentially a reprise of his role in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. He plays the same 1920’s era bumpkin charmer, and with him at the helm as director you see a lot of him, too. Rare is the scene without Clooney front and center, and his wisecracking gets a bit wearisome. Did they not have time for a sub-plot or two, or did the screenwriters just forget?

Renee Zellweger, on the other hand, is an actor. It’s just that in Leatherheads she’s made to act like a creep. Playing a sleazy, world-wise newspaper journalist, she matches Clooney’s character wisecrack for wisecrack, which is often fun to watch. If her character, Lexie Littleton, were someone we’d like to know, the one-upsmanship would be enough to make the movie mediocre. It’s not.

Carter Rutherford, played ably by John Krasinski, is as close to a protagonist as this movie has to offer. As America’s favorite football phenom he’s fine, but his character is shallow and lacks the presence to steal the spotlight from Clooney. Not that Clooney, as director, is about to let that happen.

If Leatherheads does succeed at all, it’s as a period piece. The sets are fascinating, as are the costumes. Watching the stadium’s parking lot fill with cars from the period was an especially nice scene. If only the rest of the movie were half as rewarding. Suffice it to say that if this movie were a football game, that beautiful old stadium would be empty before the start of the fourth quarter.