No touchdown for 'Leatherheads"

<a href="mailto:souellette@pressrepublican.com">By STEVE OUELLETTE</a>
Movie Review

April 10, 2008 04:47 am

— George Clooney is many things -- a performer, personality and director. He is not, however, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks and/or Preston Sturges.
Clooney, as actor-star, attempts to turn the early days of professional football into an old-fashioned screwball comedy in "Leatherheads," but comes up several yards short of the end zone. The film is never really dull; it's just not as entertaining as it could be.
Inspired, very loosely, by the story of pro football's first great star, Red Grange, "Leatherheads" is set in 1925, when college football rules the sports scene and no one, but no one, watches the rough and tumble professional form of the game.
Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, an aging but charming rogue who captains the Duluth Bulldogs. With his team, and the entire league, facing extinction, Connelly launches an ingenious plan to pull the nation's most popular college athlete, Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford -- and a war hero to boot -- off campus and put him into a Bulldog uniform.
John Krasinski (Jim on "The Office") is the affable, straight-laced and too-good-to-be-true Rutherford. Renee Zellweger is Lexie Littleton, a smart and sassy reporter who cozies up to the All-American boy while trying to discredit his war exploits.
Krasinski carries over the likability of his TV persona, even at times when I think we're not supposed to like him. He has a good rapport and some nice scenes with Clooney.
The film, though, is not as quick-witted and clever as it wants to be. The banter is more labored than snappy. And most of the problems seem to revolve around Zellweger.
I'm a Zellweger fan, but either she was terribly miscast or her part just wasn't written very well (probably the latter). She poses and quips, but nearly every line seems strained and unnatural, and the would-be slick dialogue is clunky at times. A supposed love triangle between Lexie and the two players really amounts to nothing and never seems particularly interesting.
"Leatherheads" has some moments, but none of them are Super Bowl caliber.
Rental Recommendation: I know the whole "show me the money" thing became a cliche, which overshadows the fact that "Jerry Maguire" was a really good movie with some fine work by Zellweger. Grade: A-
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