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Although football season ended a couple of months ago, football fever is alive and well in George Clooney’s latest film, Leatherheads.
In the slapstick football comedy, Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, an aging 1920s pro football player. When his team, the Duluth Bulldogs, folds, Dodge realizes that he’s pretty much unemployable—so he decides to take matters into his own hands.
In order to save the Bulldogs, Dodge convinces college football star and beloved war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to join the team. Joining them on the road is Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), an ambitious, fast-talking Chicago reporter who’s sent to sweet-talk Carter into admitting that his war-hero story isn’t true. If Lexie can do her job, professional football’s first big star is about to find himself at the center of professional football’s first big scandal.
I’ll admit that I don’t know much about football, but I do know that the idea is to bring the ball down the field toward the end zone. Of course, that doesn’t usually go smoothly. There are often interceptions and fumbles—and the play goes back and forth for a while until one team is finally able to score a touchdown. In that way, Leatherheads is a lot like a football game. Though the point is to head in one direction and eventually reach the end zone, the story doesn’t play out all that smoothly. Sometimes, it goes in the wrong direction for a while. Sometimes, it gets a little sidetracked. And, sometimes, you won’t really know where the story’s headed. But at least it’s fun to watch.
If you go to the theater expecting a whole bunch of old-fashioned football action, however, you’ll probably be disappointed. Leatherheads may be about football players in the early days of the NFL, but the football plays are kept to a minimum—until the very end. And most of the story takes place off the field—in hotel lobbies and speakeasies.
But while the story doesn’t seem to stick to any kind of game plan, Leatherheads is still a light, entertaining movie. Clooney’s good-hearted scoundrel, Dodge, brings back memories of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. And he and the always adorable Zellweger (whose sweet-and-spicy Lexie is reminiscent of Roxie Hart from Chicago) make a great team. Their slapstick comedy routine is sometimes a bit over-the-top, but it fits in with the classic screwball style—and it’s definitely amusing.
As the film’s director, Clooney holds nothing back when it comes to outrageous, Vaudeville-style comedy. The movie is filled with wacky 1920s clichés—from police chases to bar brawls. It’s crazy and sometimes a bit overdone—but it’s all in good-natured fun. So while the storytelling may be a bit haphazard, it’s clear that the cast had a whole lot of fun making Leatherheads—and that makes it fun for the audience, too.
