Leatherheads: "Missed it by THAT much..."

WARNING: THAR BE SPOILERS BELOW!


LEATHERHEADS

Rating: C

Funny thing is, I've seen at least two "screwball" comedies from the 1930s in the last month and a half-- "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town," and "It Happened One Night." George Clooney's "Leatherheads" takes a generous helping of inspiration from BOTH of these classic films, and while it gets some of the tone and trappings right, it just can't seem to find the HEART.

John Krasinski, as many of you know, plays and "up and coming" college phenom nick-named "The Bullet." He's an all-American guy, great football player and a war hero to boot.  He's got endorsements up the wazoo, and a promising law career ahead of him after he graduates.  Clooney plays the sort of manager, sort of press agent, sort of "star" of a rag-tag bunch of losers collectively known as the Duluth Bulldogs.  Professional football is still a joke, and the Bulldogs succumb to low ticket sales and general disinterest.  Rather than find other work, Clooney comes up with a plan-- do whatever it takes to make sure Krasinski plays for HIS team. 

Back in Chicago, Renee Zellweger plays a "gal reporter with moxie," who, much like Jean Arthur's character in "Mr. Deeds...," is charged with getting close to and then getting the DIRT on "The Bullet," who seems too good to be true.  Just like Claudette Colbert's character in "It Happened...," Zellweger ALSO starts falling more and more for Clooney's "Clark Gable-esque" rascally ways as they spend more and more time together. To make it a classic triangle, she ALSO seems to be falling for Krasinski, and he definitely seems to be falling for her-- so much so that he lets her in on a rather damning secret which may or may not end his career or damage his good name (it's never really clear WHAT will happen as a result of this information leaking out, actually).

This is essentially where the movie lost me.  The antics showing the early days of football were mostly amusing and interesting, and if the film would have STUCK with that angle, it might have been more entertaining in the long run.  Instead, it focusses on the love triangle.  No big deal, right? Colbert had to throw off her drip of a fiance in order to be with Gable.  Surely, like Arthur's character, Zellweger will suffer a crisis of conscience, repent of her evil, deceptive ways, beg forgiveness of the man she's double-crossed, and ultimately come to his defense... right?  WRONG. 

Bafflingly, the movie wants to set up Krasinski as the "villain" to Clooney's hero, but it just doesn't work.  We LIKE "The Bullet," we know his war story wasn't really his fault, and we never see him acting like a jerk or using his fame to manipulate people or do anything worse than take a swing at a man who has stolen his girl.  Zellweger, far from having to search her soul about what to do with the hot story, sells him out in a heartbeat... and the movie wants the audience to be on HER side when she's then threatened with being fired.  Frank Capra would have known that for the audience to be on her side we need Krasinski to be a total douche, twisting his mustache and threatening to "ruin her" or something.  But Krasinski, as I said, is a NICE guy.  I don't want to see him ruined, and I certainly wasn't on the side of a woman who'd romance a secret out of a guy and use it to crucify him (the scene Clooney orchestrates to humiliate him into confessing is also rather painful).

As if that wasn't enough, the film sends Krasinski's character to the arch-rival Chicago Buffalos team mere days before the Bulldogs are set to play them.  I guess this was also supposed to get us to see Krasinski as a bad guy or a traitor, but it still doesn't work: there are absolutely no stakes in the final game, I didn't really care if the Bulldogs won or not, and I still wasn't quite sure why Clooney-- and the audience-- was supposed to be rooting against Krasinski's character.

In the end, The Bulldogs win, Krasinski promisses to "fess up," Clooney gets the girl, and they ride off into the sunset towards connubial bliss. 

As the credits began to roll, I realized a few things: one, that the movie was an interesting attempt to recreate a certain long-lost film style, and two, I simply couldn't have cared less that Clooney and Zellweger got together. 

After further review, though, maybe they deserved each other after all.

BONUS! Fun "Leatherheads" Trivia!

Did you know that WWI (a.k.a. "the great war") ended in 1918? Given the year "Leatherheads" takes place (1925), and the fact that Carter seems to imply that he is 24 years old, he would have been all of 17 years old (maximum) when the "incident" took place.