Saturday, April 19, 2008

Reel To Reel: Leatherheads

Full contact comedy with too many timeouts.

How It Rates: **1/2
Starring: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: Football Violence, Mild Language

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"Delay of game. 5 yards. Still first down."

George Clooney's fourth directorial effort borrows from 1930's screwball comedies. When it plugs into that style, it zips along like a star running back. Otherwise it's as tedious as a lopsided Sunday-afternoon game that takes forever to finish.

Leatherheads looks at pro football in 1925, before the NFL and facemasks. It's a scrappy confederation akin to bush-league baseball, filled with sub-par jocks. College ball, however, is packing thousands of fans in. It's mainly because of war hero Carter Rutherford (Krasinski), a charming prince of the field who glides to the endzone.

He catches the eye of Dodge Connolly (Clooney), captain of a pro team on the verge of folding. He recruits Rutherford and his agent (Jonathan Pryce) with the promise of big bucks and big crowds. Newspaper reporter Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) is also smooth-talking Rutherford, a Brenda Starr trying to expose a hole in his war story. As you might expect, both guys end up with a crush on the same girl.

Leatherheads is at its best when Clooney and Zellweger's characters spar off as Connolly learns Littleton's true motives. This is where the film channels the screwball genre faithfully and perfectly with rapid-fire barbs, something Clooney perfected at a much slower speed in Oceans Eleven. They also work in a slapstick police chase, one that can only wish for the ghosts of Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton.

The problem is the screwball moments clash with the romantic moments, giving the film a genre-identity crisis. Screwball comedies require screwiness from first frame to last, something director Peter Bogdanovich realized when he made the screwball tributes What's Up, Doc? and Nickelodeon.

When the picture works, however, it really works. Everything else is a hodgepodge of incomplete passes and fumbles, making this football movie akin to football itself.

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