Leatherheads
(2008) dir. George Clooney
viewed: 04/15/08 at the Vogue Theater, SF, CA
George Clooney’s attempt at making a classically styled screwball comedy certainly has its heart in the right place and seems to have a ripe setting for a crack-up comedy, that of the pre-corporatized, barely legitimate “professional” football of the 1920’s. I thought that the trailers looked cute. Clooney had starred in a Coen Brothers attempt at a similar caprice, Intolerable Cruelty (2003), which though set in present times, somehow caught more of the feeling more of the time. The problem with Leatherheads is simply that it only hits brief patches of the back-and-forth dialogue for little stints, enough to pepper a trailer, but not a full-length movie.
It’s affable. Just not laughable. Kind of like that cheap attempt at using two words that sound alike in contrast to one another.
Certainly, it’s enjoyable. Clooney carries his charm well and co-star Renée Zellweger does a decent job with the character of the liberated, fast-talking female reporter who is out to land the big story by exposing a fraudulent war hero cum football hero. Zellweger looks good in the clothes of this period, particularly the hats. Maybe that’s why she makes so many films set in that time period.
Clooney sets himself as an aging football guy, casting himself close to his age and making jokes that even Zellweger is too young for him. But there is a heavy sentimentalism in the film, for his quickly departing heydey, for the loss of a time when football was “fun”, for the period itself, and perhaps even for the screwball comedy in general. Clooney’s direction lingers on things like the singing of “Over There” by a group of drunken football players and servicemen. Even the ending, with him riding into the sunset, taking a changed way of life, jerks for the softer tears.
Not that that is so annoying. I’ve seen worse. It’s just that I had hoped for more. The idea of this rough and rowdy day when men played pro football more for fun than money and glory, the sharp-witted dialogue, the whole package looked good. What does it mean that when football got all the rules added and the commissioner came in that it all became “no fun”? Is that a message that the NFL would like to portray?
I did have the thought that the film might have been better served by a different writer and director. Maybe Clooney should play producer? He seems attracted to interesting material. Maybe the screwball comedy is simply one for the history books and the repertory houses. No one who has tried it has really been able to capture the je ne sais qua of the early talkies. Or am I wrong?
