Watching "Leatherheads" is kind of like watching a championship football game when the field has been destroyed by rain. The game may be low-scoring and the playing may be sloppy, but hey, it's still football, and the slightly unsatisfying gameplay is offset by the skill of the players involved. So while "Leatherheads" has an occasionally muddy narrative and often feels effortful and aimless, it's still affable, amiable and entertaining. It's not a touchdown, but a field goal is better than nothing.
The ageless George Clooney plays the ageless Dodge Connelly, a rough-and-tumble pro football player (the actual positions anyone plays are pretty irrelevant in this film). Scott Boras would love Dodge: He writes his own game summaries, would look great on a Wheaties box and is inexplicably still playing the game at age 45, all without the help of HGH. Unfortunately, this is the pro football of 1925; as the trailer reminds us, "the only rules were that there were no rules." There weren't even real helmets - hence the title. Therefore, Dodge's Duluth Bulldogs draw crowds not even a minor-league hockey team in New Mexico would envy. The Bulldogs fold, and the ragtag team of misfit players are forced to continue work at Prohibition-era, coal-smudged, industrial jobs.
Enter Carter Rutherford (played by John Krasinski). Krasinski imbues Rutherford with all the aw-shucks charm of Jim Halpert, except that unlike a certain Scranton paper salesman, he's actually successful in something other than wooing Pam or pranking Dwight. Not only is Rutherford a national war hero, he is also Princeton's star player, the type who can draw crowds of 40,000 or more to a stadium and have his face on the game clock. He's also chaperoned by a greedy agent (a sneering Jonathan Pryce) and by perky female journalist Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger, enthusiastically reusing her wardrobe from "Chicago" (2002)). Littleton is driven to discover holes in Rutherford's war-hero story for the Chicago Tribune, throwing a wrench in her casual flirtation with Rutherford. Naturally, Connelly and Littleton have already met. What would a sports comedy be without an awkward love triangle?
Somewhere around halftime, the film begins to get confused about where exactly it is headed. Should it go for romantic charm and physical comedy laughs? Or demonstrate the passion the sport loses as it gains money? Something that "Leatherheads" does very well is show why sports are so frustratingly focused on money. Without that focus, the game would collapse.
What is most troubling is how little football is in this football movie. Co-written by Rick Reilly, also known as the single best thing about Sports Illustrated magazine, the script doesn't want for zing or wit. What it does occasionally lack, however, is sports sensibility. The passion of the fans, the constant financial drive and the political nature of any business, including sports, are shown on film, but the actual game scenes are confused. All the sports movie clichés are there, but they never really seem to add up.
It is unclear whose fault this is, exactly. Clooney is an adept director, and his cast is wonderful, too. But the movie tries to do too many things at once. It tries to be an old-fashioned screwball comedy, a zany Coen Brothers film and a PG-rated football version of "Bull Durham" (1988), all at the same time.
