George Clooney's 1920s football comedy Leatherheads — his third film as a director — sums up the modern-day matinee idol's attitude toward his own fame.
Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, the aging captain of the Duluth Bulldogs, one of the many failing teams on the landscape of pro football in 1925. When Princeton football hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) joins the Bulldogs and rejuvenates the league, Dodge sees his star eclipsed even further. A montage of sepia-tinted still photos shows Carter triumphant on the gridiron, while Dodge suffers indignities. Carter gets the touchdowns; Dodge takes the elbows to the face, knocking Clooney's perfect features out of whack.
It's hard to imagine another contemporary movie star who would direct himself as a leading man in a film that disrespects his age, cakes him in mud and wedges his head into a leather football helmet. The way "director Clooney" treats "actor Clooney" pretty much defines his attitude as the custodian of his public celebrity. Clooney has emerged as a contemporary Cary Grant and one of our most respected screen actors, not just through his talent and glamour but through the pains he takes to project humility. A master of self-deprecating humor, he usually attributes his success to sheer luck that NBC scheduled E.R. for Thursday nights.
In Leatherheads' most interesting scenes, Clooney uses 1920s football as a jumping-off point for talking about fame and the gap between public image and private character. The film also excels in a joshing sense of humor comparable to a more rough-and-tumble version of the male camaraderie in his Ocean's 11 movies. Only when Leatherheads strains to evoke bygone sports teams and movie genres does Clooney's trademark unflappability turn awkward and, uh, flappable.
Leatherheads finds comic gold early on in the discrepancy between college and pro football. At Princeton, Carter plays for vast adoring crowds. Dodge and his team, the Duluth Bulldogs, play for handfuls of bored spectators and the occasional cow. The Bulldogs forfeit one game when an urchin steals the team's ball — its only ball — in midplay. When the league collapses, Dodge and his beefy teammates must seek work in the mines and factories.
In the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass (or any other appropriate football analogy), Dodge talks Carter into joining the Bulldogs for a princely sum, which Carter's greedy manager (Jonathan Pryce) justifies through increasing ticket sales. Pro football becomes increasingly like show business as Dodge dictates press coverage to a sports reporter (Stephen Root), "spinning" to confirm Carter's status as a golden boy whose face deserves to be on billboards and stadium clocks.
Carter's popularity partly comes from his status as a decorated war hero. Trouble comes when Renee Zellweger's Chicago Tribune reporter Lexi Littleton (apparently the name "Lois Lane" was taken) snoops around to investigate rumors that his WWI heroism was grossly overblown. Inevitably, hard-boiled Lexi finds herself in a romantic triangle with Carter and Dodge.
Duncan Brantley's and Rick Reilly's screenplay draws Lexi as an unmistakable homage to Rosalind Russell's ace newshound in His Girl Friday, a classic screwball comedy with Cary Grant. Film buffs love vintage screwball comedies, but they resist imitation today partly because their origins in the 1930s, not long after the silent film era, derived from high-speed stage farce.
Even the Coen Brothers faltered in their screwball tribute The Hudsucker Proxy, although Leatherheads has one advantage with Krasinski, who makes a much more likable, believable "innocent" than Tim Robbins. Krasinski's minimal, soft-spoken delivery from The Office serves him extremely well, bringing the zany situations down to earth.
Lexi and Dodge engage in most of the rapid-fire repartee, which proves reasonably clever: "Were you speaking to me?" "No, I was just practicing my American accent." Putting aside some ungentlemanly thoughts (is Zellweger really the kind of knockout who could turn heads from across a hotel lobby?), the pair makes an appealing romantic duo, especially in their quieter scenes. When Leatherheads moves the slapstick off the gridiron, as in a scene with bumbling police chasing Dodge and Lexi, the film's artifice becomes too obvious.
Clooney and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (who also shot Clooney's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) give the film a glossy sheen, which lovingly records flapper-era fashions and ruddy-faced linemen. Leatherheads seems to take place in a perpetual autumn, but eventually the enshrinement of history plays against it. The closer the film gets to the end, the more nostalgic it gets for old-school pro football, back before it became literally "professional" and obsessed with rules. It's hard to get worked up over the changes in the game when Leatherheads' first act did such a good job of showing it on its last legs.
Clooney won't win any Oscars with Leatherheads, but he rises to a comedic challenge possibly more daunting than the heavyweight drama of his superb previous film, Good Night, and Good Luck. Leatherheads affirms Clooney as a tested, perfectly competent director, as well as an A-list movie star. And he's nothing if not a good sport.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2008.