Leatherheads
Taking place in the 1920s Leatherheads is a sports movie with a historic twist chronicling the birth of football as a professional sport. Apparently the only people who played football outside of college back then where uneducated laborers at the bottom of the food chain includes Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) and his rag tag team of perpetually drunk athletes. Playing for penniless farmers, their no holds barred brand of entertainment was often canceled due to lack of funds. Unable to support themselves, the team disbands forcing everyone to get day jobs in mines and workshops. Dodge on the other hand decides he is not through with football and figures that if he can recruit the most popular college player in the nation he can drum up interest and attendance for his games. This individual turns out to be Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski); a war hero and naturally gifted athlete and scholar. And since there is a rumor out there that Carter might not be the hero everyone thinks he is a reporter by the name of Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) is assigned to following him around to dig up whatever dirt she can.
A nice chemistry exists between Clooney, Zellweger and Krasinski lending credibility to the witty banter they constantly exchange. And surrounded by great character actors (such as Stephen Root) you can tell this is Clooney doing movies his way, by surrounding himself with talent and having fun with the process. Unfortunately, something just doesn’t gel here, the mixture of wit, slapstick and historical drama feels awkward and uneven. Also the movie has a lazy, slow style to it, unlike the MTV school of filmmaking the viewer is given ample time to think about what’s going on and realize that they just don’t think too highly about the movie.
In the past I’ve mentioned how I prefer sports movies to actual sports events. They are just so wonderfully compressed making it seem that if you took out all the commercials, time outs and instant replays you could watch an entire season in two hours. And while the sports movie is one of the most formulaic plots imaginable every once in a while a movie comes along that manages to get the formula wrong. Sure, they included most of the ingredients of a sports film right down to the lumbering yet childlike linebacker but somehow they forgot to throw some excitement into the mix. What surprises me is that the script and acting is consistently good but the sum of this movie’s parts doesn’t amount to much. The likely suspect is George Clooney’s lazy directorial style but I find myself blaming the editor as well. A more competent individual would have had no problem stringing together the funny scenes while chopping out the tedious moments in order to keep up some kind of momentum or coherent theme. As it stands right now the movie is just as bogged down and sloppy as the final game in knee deep mud.
And while most sports movies try to make the final game extremely exciting George Clooney decided it would be funny to make it extremely uneventful. Of course instead of laughing at how boring the last game was I ended up getting as bored as the spectators in the movie. After an equally weak epilogue I left the theater yawning and unable to decide if the movie is slightly above or below average. Either way I can see this one having a long life on television, I cannot think of a better movie to doze off to on the couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon.