Leatherheads

As a director, George Clooney is out to prove he can do it all. His first movie, Confessions of a dangerous mind, was a dark comedic thriller; Good night and Good Luck was a very serious drama shot in black and white; Now he wants to prove he can do something that is a straight up comedy. But, not just a comedy, a screwball comedy that takes it cues from the Hudson Hawk comedies of the later 1930s and early 1940s. You cannot call Clooney lazy and lacking ambition, that's for sure. However, Good night and Good luck was so good, isn't there really only way to go from there? Maybe that is why Clooney opted to make his follow up something more silly.

Dodge Connelly(Clooney) is a man's man. He is rough, tough and loves to drink. He is also a professional football player in the late 1930s where professional football is not such a popular game. Teams are folding left and right and Connelly is soon without a livelihood. Carter Rutherford(John Krasinski) is a college football star and war hero who is coming to the end of his college career. Lexie Littleton(Renee Zellwegger) is a female news reporter trying to derail Rutherford's career by exposing his war hero status as fraudulent. In order to save professional football Dodge sets out to recruit Carter to play for his Duluth Bulldogs. After some haggling with Carter's agent, CC Frazier(Jonathon Pryce) Carter leaves college to play professional football. Soon, professional football is on the rise but with a gain in popularity comes rules and regulations, which do not sit well with the aging Dodge. Dodge has also set his eyes on the lusciously lip sticked Lexie, but she seems to have her sights set on the younger, prettier and more athletic Carter. When Carter's secret is exposed Carter leave the team and joins a much more impressive team and, of course, the movie culminates in a football game between Dodge's team and Carter's new team.

Having seen plenty of those old screwball comedies I knew what I was in for, but the difference between those movies and this one is the running time. Screwball romantic comedies typically run at around 90 minutes, not 110 minutes. That is the first fault with Leatherheads: it is just too long. It is too boring in parts and that kind of overshadows the good stuff hidden inside. Clooney is a man with balls to cast himself as the underdog, seeing as how he is about the most winning man alive, but he plays the role very well. He has a very easy sexual chemistry with Zellwegger and their scenes pop off the screen with quick and witty dialogue. Unfortunately, Zellwegger and Krasinski do not fair as well together. On his own, Krasinski's all american boy winning attitude is used to great effect in the movie but he and Zellwgerr not only have the most boring stuff in the movie, they don't seem to have that all important chemistry. As we all know I am a fan of very fast moving dialogue and Leatherheads has it in spades but not all of the actors are well equipped enough to fully handle it, so it feels forced and almost lost inside the plot. The football sequences do not occupy enough of the scenes to make it a sports movie, but the climatic football scene is fun enough to make up for most of it.

Director Clooney's biggest asset as a director might also be his biggest flaw- he is an actor's director. Jonathon Pryce, who was god awful in all 3 Pirates movies, is the best I have seen him in years and Clooney loves to give lesser actors meaty roles and nice screen time, but that becomes a problem because some of those scenes are just extended to greatly and lose their value. It is called the Law of Diminishing Returns, Clooney, look it up. It is a funny movie, but not a hilarious movie. It is a good movie but not a great movie. It is comforting and entertaining enough, but you are left wanting more overall. That is not to say it does not have great moments because it does. The initial meeting between Clooney and Zellwegger is hilarious and the bar fight towards the end has everything a screwball is supposed to have, including the piano player playing all the way through it and even busting a bottle over a guy's head.

Clonney misstepped a little with Leatherheads, but it isn't a total loss and proves he can do comedy, mostly. I trust as he directs more movies he will learn the value of editing and tightening things up in comedy. Comedy is meant to be fast and short not a bit bloated and muddied within the plot of the movie. He may also be telling us about how the media takes something and runs with it, which is still happening today, but I am not sure this is the movie for that. He has an eye for the physical comedy and the fast dialogue which will go far in the world of comedy. Now he just has to understand when enough is enough. But any time the most popular guy in the world makes himself the aging underdog, it is hard to totally write him off. The funnies thing is, we actually believe he is the underdog!

Final Grade: C+