Written, directed by, and starring George Clooney, it’s fair to say that Leatherheads is a movie with George Clooney stamped all over it, both literally and figuratively. Who else, you wonder, would bother to create an old school nineteen twenties charmer who combines Cary Grant arch and Jimmy Stewart can-do? Who else, more pertinently, could possibly play such a smooth operator?
Set against the backdrop of the non-standardised (which in this instance means violent as all hell) budding professional football league, from its vaguely sepia gloss to its use of period acting specialist Renée Zelweger, Leatherheads is completely defined by its nostalgia. Even the screwball set up seems to demand space in a museum rather than a cinema.
Mr. Clooney plays Dodge Connolly, an over-the-hill footballer with a roguish twinkle in his eye. Determined to save his struggling team in Duluth, he enlists John Krasinski, a golden boy college player recently returned from the Great War with a heroic tour of duty under his belt.
Enter Renée Zelweger, a feisty ace reporter who smells a rat. Determined to get to the bottom of Krasinski’s war record, she seduces him, though takes a shine to George. Between their sassy, though predictable couplets – “I didn’t come here to be insulted”/”Where do you usually go?” – we find ill-advised keystone comedy and implausible romance.
Much as we want to love Leatherheads and much as Dodge replays Clooney’s Greatest Hits – a dash of Intolerable Cruelty’s Miles, a pinch of Oh Brother’s Ulysses Everett McGill, a smidgeon of Danny Ocean – it never actually sweeps you off your feet. When apart Clooney and Zelweger are capable of blazing up the screen. Together it’s tumbleweeds not sparks that fly. The dialogue is partially to blame. There simply isn’t enough, either in quantity or quality, to facilitate the rat-a-tat machine gun patter required for screwball.
Still, it’s hard to entirely resist Clooney when he’s batting his eyelashes in our direction. Soon, we feel, George the Matinee Idol may disappear forever behind George, the Grand Imperial Poobah of Hollywood. Catch the original version while you still can.