Leatherheads

Agreeable yet uneven, Leatherheads follows ’20s-era football player Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) as he attempts to legitimize the sport by bringing in a hotshot college superstar (John Krasinski’s Carter Rutherford). Complications ensue as Carter’s heroic wartime antics are called into question by a tenacious female reporter (Renee Zellweger’s Lexie Littleton), though it’s her relationship with both men that inevitably threatens to tear the team apart. Director Clooney, working from a screenplay by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, has infused Leatherheads with an unapologetically kooky atmosphere that proves effective at evoking the screwball efforts of the ’30s and ’40s, with the inclusion of several overtly ridiculous interludes (ie Dodge and Lexie knock out a pair of cops and steal their uniforms) reflecting the filmmaker’s obvious desire to ape the feel and tone of an old-school comedy. And although Clooney and his various costars ably capture the broad acting style of their Golden-Age brethren, there’s simply no denying that the movie ultimately suffers from an inconsistent narrative that’s exacerbated by the 114 minute running time and laid-back pace. It subsequently goes without saying that the whole thing begins to seriously run out of steam once it passes the one-hour mark, as Brantley and Reilly have populated the third act with a series of decidedly non-comedic elements – with the subplot surrounding Carter’s war record easily establishing itself as one of the film’s more obviously needless threads. That being said, Leatherheads primarily comes off as an amiable throwback to the fast-talking endeavors of yesteryear and there’s little doubt that it’s the uniformly likeable performances that generally keep the proceedings afloat.

**1/2 out of ****