Leatherheads: Review By CinemaguyMaster

Is Leatherheads about the difficult times of professional football during the 1920s? The answer: kind of. Instead of focusing about the struggles of the sport or exploring in depth about its reborn, Director George Clooney kicks the ball off the field and makes it more of a soapy-like love story that takes away most of the fun—and screen time. Despite the eye-candy art direction, interesting dialogue and the great charm of our main protagonists, Leatherheads falls short to provide any sense of camaraderie between the players or what the sport was really about after the Great War. In other words, it’s more of a romantic-comedy love triangle than anything else.

Brief Intro Story:

It is 1925 and professional football is not the extravagant or rich sport that it is today—actually college football was the real thing at the time, making the professional version a risky enterprise. Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly (George Clooney) is a has-been “all purpose” football player who is the leader of a professional team. He is nearly broke and so is the team. Because there is no money left to pay the bills, they decide to end their football days—everybody is sad and most of them go back to their old jobs, but Dodge hasn’t given up yet. To make professional football exciting (and lucrative) again, he collects some money and hires raising college football star and war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski)—despite the doubts of Carter’s promoter CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce). The contract is signed and all the teammates are happy to be back in the football business. Meanwhile, sexy reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) shows up to write a story about the young star. Unfortunately Dodge and Carter fall in love with her and the real competition outside the football field begins. As the story continues, we’ll find more truths about Carter and his war hero days.

Review:

Leatherheads does have great comical moments and excellent performances by Zellweger and Clooney. They talk, joke, run and kiss throughout the film—there is absolutely chemistry between them. Also we enjoy its promising (and colorful) beginning, but the fun slowly deteriorates once the love triangle and the “war hero question” subplots start to develop. Unfortunately this “off-topic” approach hurts the momentum and the whole thing becomes tedious and even boring. Let’s remember that the film is 114 minutes long, so the editing department could have done a better job. Like many of you, we were under the impression that Leatherheads was going to be a football film (with character development and a sense of camaraderie between the teammates), but in the end, it is just a screwball romantic-comedy combo and the sport in question becomes just a “wallpaper.” Because of this, the final game does not have the furor or impact that other great sport films have.

In the art department, Leatherheads does everything right. The look and feel of the 1920s is deeply felt: the costume design, locations and the color temperature used in the cinematography are excellent. We totally praise the amount of time and dedication that took to recreate the time period—Good Night and Good Luck was another film by Clooney where he did an excellent job with the visuals. Also the duotone photos and the music give Leatherheads a nice and unique look.

The Verdict:

Don’t expect classic sport moments like Victory or Hoosiers here. Leatherheads does look great, but the romantic comedy takes center stage and football is more like a background image where their love story takes place. We like the chemistry, but next time please explore the sport a bit more and make the film a bit shorter.