Leatherheads
Directed by George Clooney
Starring George Clooney,
Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Wayne Duvall, Jonathan Pryce
Universal Pictures
Rated PG-13
Release Date: April 4, 2008

Leatherheads: Early Football Follies

“Oh, oh, the medals. Well, I just wore those to get off the train. I suppose I shouldn’t have.” —Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith from Hail The Conquering Hero

“You’d be surprised about what you can get, if you ask for it the right way.” —Jack Foley from Out Of Sight

“I’m fascinated by that creature. Richer than me? Well, she deserves every penny. And now she’s single again. Excuse me.” —Miles Massey from Intolerable Cruelty

George Clooney has ingratiated himself with audiences since Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight. E.R. made him a household name, but success on the big screen was elusive for the most part. I thought he was good in One Fine Day and he was having fun with everyone else in From Dusk Till Dawn, but it was not until 1998 that Clooney found the perfect role. Soderbergh needed a hit and Clooney needed a hit. They needed each other. Out Of Sight marked the arrival of George Clooney as a movie star. He nailed the part of Jack Foley while having great chemistry with Jennifer Lopez’s Karen Sisco; the film remains one of the best things Jennifer Lopez has ever done. Since Out Of Sight, Clooney has had a large string of great and interesting roles– Three Kings, the Ocean’s Eleven films, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Perfect Storm, Intolerable Cruelty, Syriana, and Michael Clayton. He is so likable that he manages to make us sit through the lesser Soderbergh collaborations like Solaris and The Good German — the films may not be that good, but we are transfixed by his performances. He is the closest thing we have to the old Hollywood stars like Clark Gable and Cary Grant. He has a keen sensibility for picking serious and comic roles. He not only acts but he directs as well — Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind and Good Night and Good Luck are not films directed by a pretty boy. George Clooney knows his stuff. He has political ideas like Warren Beatty before him; he manages to put these thoughts into his films and he makes them work without hitting us over the head with them.

Leatherheads should be George Clooney’s masterpiece, but sadly, it is not. Leatherheads is by no means a bad film, but it could have been a truly great film. I have been reading about this film since Out Of Sight came out. At one time it looked like Steven Soderbergh was going to direct George Clooney in it, but that was a long time ago and a different studio regime. As a director, Clooney has a lot going for him. He watched a lot of the classic screwball comedies in preparation for making Leatherheads. The film is a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of America’s emerging pro-football in 1925. Clooney is delightful and charming as Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, a World War I Vet and football hero who is determined to take his team all the way to pro-football glory. This is the first time that Clooney is comfortable, almost too comfortable, in playing this type of character. I would say he is so self-aware of his persona that there are several times in the film that he winks to the camera as Clark Gable once did.

In 1925, no one thinks that football is going to last long. Dodge has a brilliant idea to tempt war hero turned Princeton football star, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinki), away from law school to play football. If Rutherford plays football, people will fill the stadiums. But there may be a problem — Rutherford may not be all he’s cracked up to be. His exploits in the trenches during The Great War may not have been as heroic as everyone thinks. At least one person, newspaper reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), has been assigned to get the real dirt on Rutherford. Of course, Dodge and Carter vie for Lexie’s affections throughout the film.

Actually the subplot regarding Carter’s exploits from World War I are straight from Preston Sturges’ Hail The Conquering Hero. I have to say that Krasinki (from the television series, The Office) does a decent job of channeling Eddie Bracken’s Truesmith from the Sturges’ film. Clooney is borrowing from different films, but it is nice to see him have such an appreciation for the classic screwball comedies. He is certainly trying to go for the same tone that the Coen Brothers used for The Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and to a lesser extent, Intolerable Cruelty. A current film that got this tone just right is Bharat Nalluri’s delightful period romp, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.

Of the three films that Mr. Clooney has directed, this seems to be his least successful. If you are going to make a romantic comedy, you need two actors with great chemistry to make it work. Renee Zellweger is horribly miscast as Lexie Littleton. There are some films where her style has worked very well — Love and A .45, The Whole Wide World, Jerry Maguire, Deceiver, Nurse Betty, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Down With Love. Let me blunt, she is no Rosalind Russell, Katherine Hepburn, or Jean Arthur. She is simply not Clooney’s equal. Her presence sinks the film which is a shame because Clooney is terrific, but not even his charisma can create the necessary fireworks for this part of the film. Jennifer Jason Leigh played this part much better in The Hudsucker Proxy. Michelle Pfeiffer would have been a better choice just given her work opposite Clooney in One Fine Day, or even Julia Roberts based on their work together in Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve. Come to think of it, Amy Adams would have been perfect as Lexie Littleton. There is no chemistry between Clooney and Zellweger and it hurts the film. She is the film’s weakest link. It is a waste too because Zellweger was delightful in Down With Love. I thought she might be able to pull this one off, but she cannot hold her own against Clooney. This part of the film wants to be His Gal Friday, The Front Page, and The Talk Of The Town, but it just does not work well at all.

What the film does have going for it is George Clooney, who seems to be having a great time onscreen. Where the film works very well is when Dodge interacts with his teammates. The football scenes are funny and there is some genuine slapstick on display here. Clooney plays Dodge as an extension of himself. There is an interesting commentary being made by Clooney in the second half of the film. Once the rules of the game come into play, the game loses its appeal to Dodge. Of course, the idea of selling out 45,000 seats in a stadium is one of the league’s goals, but with that comes respectability — no more big brawls on the football field or any other contrarian behavior. Dodge’s way of doing things is on the way out.

At times, Cameron Crowe aims to be our generation’s Billy Wilder. Steven Soderbergh cannot make up his mind whom he wants to be. The Good German may be uneven at best, but it was interesting to see him channel Michael Curtiz and Carol Reed for that film, even if it did not work out that well in the end. I think it is great that Clooney has found inspiration from Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, and the other great directors from the this golden era. Leatherheads is flat; I am positive it would not even be worthwhile without Clooney’s presence. Still his presence, even at his most self-aware best makes it a curiosity on his resume. Although Clooney is a true movie star, he still needs a good script filled with wit and clever dialogue to dazzle us. Screwball comedies are products of time and place. Maybe, the time and place are not now.