Older Reviews- Leatherheads

            Leatherheads is an enjoyable but easily forgettable and rarely original war film, sports drama, and romantic comedy rolled into one. With everything this movie has going for it, it should have gone further than it did, but while it may not score a touchdown, it has a few decent plays on the field.

            The movie boasts an all-star team of George Clooney (who doubles as the director), Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, and Jonathan Price. Clooney plays Dodge Connolly, an suave and witty middle aged professional football player for the Duluth Bulldogs in a time when professional football meant acting on childhood fantasy, and professional football’s spectators consisted of cows staring blankly at the twenty-two grown men tumbling around in the mud and ruining perfectly good grass. As the Bulldogs lose their sponsorship and chance to play, Dodge decides to convince college football star Carter Rutherford (Krasinski) to join the team. Meanwhile, beautiful yet tough reporter Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) gets in the middle of the two men as she attempts to uncover a scandal about Rutherford’s “war-hero” past (and, of course, sleep with both Rutherford and Connolly at the same time).

            The movie is perfectly happy to be cheesy. Zelleweger seems to have perfected the art of parroting historical genres, between Leatherheads, Down With Love, and Chicago. Clooney is almost too charming, and Krasinski almost too goofy at times, but the parodies are recognizable and keep the characters somewhat loveable. Jonathan Price appears to be phoning in his performance as Rutherford’s manipulative agent, but with a character so cliché, there really isn’t any need for him to pull out anything remarkable in his acting. Some of the jokes fall flat—not because they aren’t funny, but because they were only funny in the first three hundred movies to use them. Some conversations are directly ripped out of better films (the conversation about what can and cannot be said on the radio is almost exactly the same as the one in Inherit the Wind), and if I see one more movie where sappy music is played when the romantic hero first sees the romantic heroine, I will have to tackle the projectionist and intercept the film.

            That said, stylistically, the movie is fun to watch. Randy Newman’s score adds nicely to the twenties vibe, and the slightly faded coloration makes the film look like a classic. Certain scenes do manage to be amusing—Clooney and Zelleweger have an appropriately entertaining argument while on two levels in a bunk bed, and the final showdown between Clooney and Krasinski is certainly fun to watch (all I will say is that it involved enough mud that I spent the entire scene trying to figure out how many hoses and showers would be needed to wash it off).  Even the cheesiness of the romantic comedy is entertaining at times. The audience was laughing from start to finish, but it was hard to tell whether they were laughing with Clooney’s antics or at his critical fumble.

            With the sheer number of films out there, it is fairly difficult to recapture the twenties and forties style charm that Leatherheads attempts to copy. In Singing in the Rain, Debbie Reynolds comments of the movies, “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.” It is certainly possible to re-imagine a genre, and while imitation is a decent start and a worthy form of flattery, movies like Leatherheads too often leave the audience with a sense of deja-vu and a desire to see something—anything—that manages to break away from that sort of cliché. Like the football players in the film, this is a genre that has been tackled one too many times. 

Grade: B-