The TV Addict 

George Clooney’s LEATHERHEADS is two movies when it should have really been one. The film fumbles in and out – seemingly blindly at times – of being a nostalgic throw-back to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and an underdog sports movie, when it should have forfeited the later for the former. Instead the film awkwardly shifts its rickety frame from one genre to the next, never successfully melding the two together well enough for it all to work. It’s too bad because there’s a delightfully fun screwball film buried beneath it all, and when it peeks out you wish the rest of the film were like it.

The basic sports story centers on Dodge Connelly (George Clooney), who runs the Duluth Bulldogs football team, a down-and-dirty professional football team before rules were brought in, and the fun removed When the team goes broke, Dodge hatches a plan to hire a superstar college football player and war hero, Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski) to save the team, and legitimize – or at least popularize – the sport.

The screwball comedy element comes in when Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), the smart, witty young report who won’t be outmatched by any man (in other words, Rosalind Russell in HIS GIRL FRIDAY), is promised a prestigious position if she can “cook the goose” of Carter Rutherford whose fame as a war hero may be somewhat of a fib. Inevitably both Carter and Dodge fall in love with her, and you have the typical screwball war of the hearts, even if you know whose going to win out in the end. After all, it’s like pitting Cary Grant and Gary Copper against each other in the same film, or – for that matter – Grant and James Stewart (PHILADELPHIA STORY). The stoic romanticism of Cooper or Stewart can work if they’re headlining their film, but in competition they could never beat the ineffable charm of Grant.

The Grant comparison is no accident either. Clooney gets frequently compared to Cary Grant, both for his on and off screen charm, and their similarities are never more apparent than in LEATHERHEAD. His charisma is palpable, thanks largely to his go-for-broke “aw-shucks” approach here. The film is never better when it features him in the romance plot, bouncing lines of Zellweger (who isn’t quite Jean Arthur from MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, but does do her best), and Krasinski. This becomes especially noticeable when in the final act the screwball comedy disappears, and we’re left with weighed down sports film that gives you a typical underdog ending.

It’s not that the film isn’t entertaining or funny. Clooney ensures that it is. It’s just that it should have stuck to the genre it more heavily pays homage to, instead of getting muddled by the various sub-plots the sports element of the film forces upon it. HIS GIRL FRIDAY and MR.DEEDS, for example, work because the humorous interaction of characters came first, with the actual plot being neatly disguised in the background, careful never to overshadow its characters too much. The story never threatened to overcome the romance. It’s a lesson LEATHERHEADS failed to appropriate.

Overall rating: C+