Zellweger and Clooney are a potent 1-2 punch
Given the contemporary imperative to put movies into boxes neatly sorted by function, it’s hard to know what to make of “Leatherheads,” a light, charming, well-executed pastiche of a 1930s screwball comedy that alternates between witty repartee and (less successfully) broad slapstick. Written 17 years ago by sportswriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly and passed around like a football since, the movie plays like a loving homage to the comedies of George Cukor and Preston Sturges. It doesn’t quite live up to them, but then that wouldn’t be possible.
Like the nostalgia trip that inspired it, “Leatherheads” leaves you wondering why people don’t talk/act/dress like that anymore and what Renee Zellweger is doing in that hat. (Not that she doesn’t look great in it.) The movie stars George Clooney, who also directs, as an aging football player trying to fend off the demise of his team, the Duluth Bulldogs, at a time (1925) when college football was hugely popular but professional football was an unregulated, unremunerative joke.
As Dodge Connelly (Clooney) faces a grim future of unemployment, Princeton star and war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski, charming as the rather hapless yet untouchable golden boy) fends off fans and product endorsements everywhere he goes. When Dodge learns that 40,000 people attended a Princeton game just to see Carter play, he hatches a plan to recruit the young star for the Bulldogs. Meanwhile, in Chicago, wise-cracking girl reporter Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) is given the assignment to expose Carter’s war heroism as a fraud.
Thus, a classic screwball love triangle is set up among the rakish trickster, the whip-smart, wise-cracking cutie and the strapping, innocent young hunk. “Leatherheads” proceeds agreeably, hitting occasional high notes when it isn’t getting bogged down in forced slapstick hi-jinks.
Some of the plot twists hinge on far-fetched contrivances -- it is Carter’s manager CC Frazier (played by Jonathan Pryce) who learns of Lexie’s assignment by overhearing the concierge repeat a message, left by her editor, word for word. And ironically, it’s the action scenes that slow the movie down. The games and the fights tend to go overboard and stretch out far too long, and a barroom brawl featuring a ragtime piano player and lots of smashed bottles is particularly painful.
The best moments are those in which the characters -- archetypes, but archetypes you’re happy to revisit -- are given free reign on their interaction. There’s something sly and lovely about the way Lexie finds herself stuck between the two football players, not just romantically but in age as well. As she says, if Carter is too young for her, she’s technically too young for Dodge, and her observation echoes a sentiment that the movie echoes more than once -- that there’s something ruthlessly simplistic about the American version of success; that luck, chance and timing play a bigger role in it than is strictly good for us. “We like our heroes,” Carter is told repeatedly -- once his aura starts minting money, not even a scandal can tarnish it.
The beginning of a corporate era in football is, to Dodge and the filmmakers, the end of a free era when rules did not apply. Given what capitalism has done to sports, the arts, the press, you name it, it’s not hard to side with the sentiment.
This rather melancholy undertone is perhaps the most enjoyable thing about “Leatherheads,” which is substantially subtler than it makes itself out to be. Dodge and Lexie get the funny lines, but they also have to suffer the fate of smart people in a world ruled by commercial interests -- they can’t win, but Clooney and Zellweger radiate intelligence and seem to take pleasure in each other’s mental agility. Even when the lines are less than spectacular, the spark between the two actors is knowing and playful.
If Clooney is often cited as the descendant of Cary Grant, Zellweger has demonstrated (specifically in “Down With Love” and “Chicago”) that she’s at home in parts that might have gone to Rosalind Russell or Barbara Stanwyck. Matched wits in romantic comedies have gone the way of the gentleman’s fedora and the lady’s cloche, and it makes you wonder exactly why the comedies of the sexes wound up where they wound up.
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“Leatherheads.” MPAA rated: PG-13 for brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes. In wide release.
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