Leatherheads
George Clooney (2008)
In the unglamorous world of 1920s pro American football, the Duluth Bulldogs (from Minnesota) have fallen on hard times. Their commercial sponsor withdraws financial support for the team and its members go back to their previous jobs – mining and other back-breaking or soul-destroying kinds of labouring. Dodge Connelly (George Clooney), the aging heart and brain of the team, has no other work to return to and can’t see a life for himself outside football. He persuades CC (Jonathan Pryce), the wily, chilly agent of Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), that his protégé should join the Bulls. Carter is a national celebrity – a star of college football (which is glamorous) and honoured for his First World War exploits: he’s bound for Yale and a career in the law once he’s graduated from Princeton. On his way to setting up the deal, Dodge crosses the path of Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a journalist who is trailing Carter in order to expose the truth of his military record.
It’s determinedly bland but Leatherheads wastes less of George Clooney than the wordy, tedious Michael Clayton, in which he sternly refused to crack his face for virtually the whole two hours. Clooney’s decision to make an ‘entertainment’ after a run of more ‘serious’ work as star, director and/or executive producer is self-conscious but he directs fluently. The storytelling is clear even if the pacing is too relaxed (especially in the last 20 minutes) and even though the material is so formulaic that the end is almost bound to be an anti-climax. Although it purports to be a light-hearted lament for the primitive days of American football before rules were introduced and removed much of the fun, Leatherheads feels more concerned with disappeared types of film or types in films – the newspaper comedy, the charming chancer and his girl who can live happy ever after. More specifically, it seems to nod to and echo two George Roy Hill films of the 1970s – The Sting and the ice hockey comedy-drama Slap Shot. The former’s inspiration was itself synthetic, which gives an idea of how removed from reality Leatherheads is (so that the jolly Randy Newman score seems a pastiche less of 1920s ragtime than of Marvin Hamlisch). Clooney regularly inserts sepia stills of the characters and the football crowds; even in colour, Leatherheads has a glowing sepia look, right up to the sunset into which Dodge and Lexie finally disappear.
As Dodge (based on a real life player, Johnny ‘Blood’ McNally), Clooney is a little too well-groomed to be believable in the muck of the football field (whenever he takes off his helmet his hair goes obediently back into place) – but that actually makes the character funnier than it would have been with someone rougher in the part. He gives himself the chance to show his skills as a physical and romantic comedian: he does a bit of mugging but also some terrific work with his eyes (for example, he overuses them in scenes with Lexie – for comic effect but in a way that hints at a touching insecurity in Dodge). It’s the combination of Clooney’s innate courtesy and expert timing in Dodge’s verbal duels with Lexie that make his performance so likeable. In some scenes, Renee Zellweger still doesn’t seem to have got out of her system the stylised approach to character she developed for Roxie Hart: her movement and line readings here are highly proficient but she seems (especially facially) less expressive and individual than in some of her pre-Chicago roles. But she’s good when she melts and when Lexie gives off a sense of resentment with her role in a man’s world (this makes the character more interesting but the required happy ending even more hollow). Krasinski, who is Jim Halpert (based on the Martin Freeman role) in the US version of The Office, plays a difficult part intelligently (and Clooney directs him very skilfully). There’s a freshness in Krasinski’s scenes, particularly his scenes with Zellweger; he also gets over Carter’s moral cowardice in an unstressed way. Among the broadly-played smaller parts, Peter Cerrety stands out as relatively subtle as the newly-appointed American football commissioner. The serviceable script is by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly – although Clooney appears to have had a large hand in the writing too (and has fallen out with the Writers’ Guild over their refusing to give him a co-writing credit). The jokey, thudding football field violence is more rationed than might be feared from its prominence in the film’s advertising. Because Leatherheads is calculated to be feelgood (and harmless), it can’t be exhilarating – but it is enjoyable.
4 and 13 April 2008