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Leatherheads
By
Christopher Shappley
The third time is not
the charm for Clooney's Leatherheads
George Clooney takes
another turn as director/actor in the occasionally entertaining, but
mostly prosaic Leatherheads.
Leatherheads is
the story of a 1920’s pro football team in Duluth, Illinois. Dodge
Connolly, played by Clooney, is the team’s star, but when the team loses
its funding, Connolly seeks out decorated war veteran and College
football celebrity Carter Rutherford, played by John Krasinski, to help
the boost the team to megastar status.
With Rutherford,
however, comes the unsure history of his famous war stories causing the
Chicago Tribune to put journalist Lexie Littleton, played by Renée
Zellweger, on Rutherford’s heels.
While Littleton uses
her charm to get close to Rutherford, Connolly and Littleton build a
little romance of their own creating a love triangle of minimal
proportions.
The film never takes
itself too seriously allowing the actors room to have fun with the
script. Nevertheless, the film fails in its dragging out of jokes that
were dead long before they left the screen. After the fifth or sixth
falling-in-the-mud joke, and a fistfight that continues on long after
the laughter ends; the audience begins to grow weary. It’s never good
when the actors start having more fun than the audience.
But, Leatherheads
manages to give us several winsome moments. No actress working today
plays the 1920’s female better than Zellweger (i.e. Chicago and
Cinderella Man). And Clooney does a decent job of portraying a
present day Peyton Manning in a 1920’s fashion with the larger-than-life
status of Rutherford. His face is seen in ads ranging from shaving
razors to anything else you could imagine, and the arrogant portrayal by
Krasisnki nearly hits the caricature out of the park.
The film just needed
fewer Hail Mary’s, and maybe few more fresh ideas to make it something
truly special. Like most of its jokes, Leatherheads begins to
overstay its welcome by the final act, but the film offers enough
whimsical slap-stick to keep it off the bench, yet not enough to make it
a star player.
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