Leatherheads (Clooney, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Richard Feilden.  Viewed in Theater.

Leatherheads is George Clooney’s third crack at directing for the big screen. This is his shot at recreating the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s, but unfortunately it is, on the whole, a miss.

The film revolves around an attempt to change professional football from a farce to a force. With his own team forced into bankruptcy, Jimmy ‘Dodge’ Connelly (Clooney) recruits college superstar and war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski from the US TV version of The Office) to boost gate numbers and keep the game alive. Unfortunately for Dodge and Carter, investigative reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) is also interested in Carter, believing that his tales of heroics in The Great War may not be all that they seem.

The classic screwball comedy was one of the genres that came about, at least in part, from the enforcement of the Hays production code. These cinematic rules, intended to clean up Hollywood, decreed that certain things could not be seen. Drug use, nudity, bad language and sex were amongst the things that were banned – the staples of Hollywood films today! So for these romantic comedies the sex became banter and verbal sparring. This can be seen most effectively in films like His Girl Friday, a movie from out of whose shadow Clooney’s film never steps.

The problem isn’t Clooney’s on screen persona. He is a little too physically imposing to truly emulate Cary Grant’s comedic posturing, but his lovable rogue personality works well here. It is when he goes into battle with Renée Zellweger that everything just falls flat. There is no sparkle to their repartee, no chemistry between them. Their conversations run too slowly (as does the film in general) and they come across as petulant children clumsily grasping for insults to sling, rather than articulate adults engaging in verbal fore-play. The script does them no favors, with no attempt to establish the characters in their world. Dodge for instance seems to know everyone, from corrupt managers to state prosecutors, but there is never any suggestion of how he has come to be so well connected and Lexi’s claims to be the best reporter on her paper are never substantiated outside of a comment by her boss. She bemoans the pressure of being a woman working in a man’s world, yet she seems to breeze through life as though the glass ceiling were no more than a myth.

There is also a strange level of prudishness regarding sex and freedom regarding language. We are supposed to buy Zellerger as a siren capable of charming the truth from her targets, yet when presented with opportunities to show her appeal (and reinforce the sexism of the era) Clooney shies away – apparently more fearful of political correctness than his predecessors were of the censors. Conversely he introduces swearing to a genre which relished the opportunities presented by the clever pun and the witty put down. When words are your weapons you choose rapier sharpness with which to arm yourself, not a dull club to batter the audience over the head with.

All this being said the film is certainly not terrible. It has its moments and some entertaining visual gags, however it just never rose to greatness. Do yourself a favor and rent a true screwball comedy (you could do no better than to start with the above mentioned His Girl Friday) and give Leatherheads a pass.