Clooneys Leatherheads mildly funny mostly fluff
April 16th, 2008, 5:12 pm Hobbies Ideas
However, you’ll find more satisfaction by turning on
the Turner Classic Movies channel. “Leatherheads”
is a lazily written pastiche coasting on the superficial
qualities of its leads, who are the film’s only selling
point. Screenwriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly
don’t carefully craft characters, they dilly-dally with
them, sketching them broadly and skimping on the details.
Which means we have three wafer-thin people at story’s
center. Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, a graying footballer
worried the game might be changing: “There’s a new
and dangerous element creeping in — rules,” he quips.
We’re told that Dodge is a renegade who loves the
anything-goes creativity of old-fashioned football, but,
besides the aforementioned brawl, we don’t see much of
this.
His team, the Bulldogs, is like many others in the pro
league, existing on a financial shoestring. The plug is
pulled, condemning the players to drudge work in factories
and coal mines. Why anyone would care about implementing
rules in a dying game is curious, but never mind.
Dodge has an idea. Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) is a
star player for Princeton, a clean-cut war hero whose
success on the football field and battlefield has landed his
face on billboards across the country. Dodge offers Carter
and his hawkish agent CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) a
lucrative deal to play professionally, and the Bulldogs are
reborn.
Where Dodge and the team get the money is curious, but never
mind. Enter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a saucy
newspaper reporter following a hot tip that Carter’s
war-hero status is greatly exaggerated. She’s assigned
to build him up, then tear him down, but before she can
swiftboat the kid, she develops squooshy feelings for him.
Predictably, Lexie is conflicted — her job or her heart?
Meanwhile, Dodge is also after the latter, so, as people in
movies do when their external loathing masks the mush
inside, they exchange snappy insults with whip-cracking
verbosity. These are “Leatherheads”‘ best
moments, when its lackadaisical pace is revved up with a bit
of moxie, the screenplay allowing some chemical sparks
between Clooney and Zellweger.
Otherwise, the film offers mild amusement at best, letting
Clooney cruise on his debonair charm and Zellweger squish
and squint that trademark sour puss, while Krasinski is an
affable blank.
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