Leatherheads (2008)

Director:

George Clooney

Writers (WGA):

Duncan Brantley (written by) &
Rick Reilly (written by)

Release Date:

4 April 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Romance | Sport

Tagline:

In the beginning, the rules were simple. There weren't any.

Plot:

A romantic comedy set in the world of 1920s football, where the owner of a professional team drafts a strait-laced college sensation, only to watch his new coach fall for his fiancée.

Plot Keywords:

Student Athlete | Athlete | Soldier | Flashback Sequence | Police Chase

US Showtimes:

(register to personalize)

Cast

George Clooney	...	Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly
Renée Zellweger	...	Lexie Littleton
John Krasinski	...	Carter Rutherford
Jonathan Pryce	...	C.C. Frazier
Stephen Root	...	Suds
Wayne Duvall	...	Coach Frank Ferguson
Keith Loneker	...	Big Gus Schiller
Malcolm Goodwin	...	Bakes
Matt Bushell	...	Curly
Tommy Hinkley	...	Hardleg
Tim Griffin	...	Ralph
Robert Baker	...	Stump
Nick Paonessa	...	Zoom
Nicholas Bourdages	...	Bug
Jack Thompson	...	Harvey

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

Runtime:

USA:114 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | SDDS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Germany:6 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #44052) | Canada:PG (Alberta/British Columbia/Ontario) | Ireland:PG | Australia:PG | Canada:G (Manitoba/Quebec) | UK:PG

Filming Locations:

Anderson, South Carolina, USA

Company:

Casey Silver Productions

Trivia:

Clooney claimed that he had rewritten all but two scenes and had asked the WGA for credit. When they denied his request, he removed himself as a voting member and changed his status to "Financial Core Member."

Goofs:

Factual errors: There are several key historical errors. For one, the NFL did not have a commissioner until 1941, and he was not appointed by Congress. Moreover, he would not have had the power to deal with the media as he does in the film.

Quotes:

Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly: You're only as young as the woman you feel.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: (2008-04-05)" (2008)

Never goes anywhere

"Leatherheads" is a producers dream. On the one hand you have a story about the early stage of Pro-football to attract the guys and on the other you have one of those playful 1920's romances where the characters do and say witty things, which I'm going to assume women dig. So the movie contains all the right ingredients. All that needs to happen now is the parts need to show up on the screen, but oddly enough, the movie underwhelms in both regards.

It starts out fairly well, mocking the early pro-football setup before agents, advertisers, and John Madden took over. The most memorable shot in the entire movie is a cow watching from the sidelines as a rag-tag group of men run back and forth chasing a little ball (and you only get one ball per game). Dodge Connolly (George Clooney) is the leader of these men, the Duluth Bulldog football team. He's an old man, his glory days behind him but he stays in it because, like most of the other men on the team, these guys don't really have a lot of options and pro-football pays them almost in scrap.

The team is running out of money however, forcing Dodge to come up with a plan to put asses in the seats or else it's over. Enter Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski, The Office), a war hero and football star at Princeton whom Dodge pays a hefty sum of money to bring on to the Bulldogs. His star brings glamor and success to the franchise, but along with all that, he also brings Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a Chicago Tribune reporter trying to find out the real scoop on his so-called World War 1 heroism record.

As a director, Clooney brings a fun, airy tone to the movie, which almost makes up for the screenplay's near complete lack of jokes. And as an actor, he does well in the role of charming clown and Zellweger supports him nicely with a spirited and quick-witted performance. The screenplay on the other hand doesn't really work at all. There was a point half-way through where I just sat back and realized this movie really wasn't going anywhere. The story tries to shoehorn in a romance, a football movie, a movie about rules, a movie about the celebrity culture of the game, a lot of old-fashioned 1920's verbal sparring, and a war story that may or may not be true into the same screenplay. There are a lot of ideas here and really that's all they seem to be. Nothing really feels fleshed out.

After a promising start, the football scenes are few and far between, until we get to the ending where you'll see one of the most uninteresting and labored football games ever committed to film. And the romance never quite connects. I don't know if it's because the movie feels so PG or if it's because there is all this other stuff constantly in its way but the movie stifles itself and unfortunately after a certain point, it never recovers despite its star's best efforts.