This has been a good spring for comedies that look backward in time for their inspiration. Last month, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day harkened back to an age of zany films that embraced farcical situations, mistaken identities, hidden secrets, slapstick humor, fast-talking, witty repartee and turbulent, mismatched romances — the very definition of the bygone screwball comedy. Now comes Leatherheads, which draws on the same inspiration, for an imperfect, if perfectly enjoyable, result.
Leatherheads takes place in 1925, a time of jazz, prohibition and crowded speakeasies. Football, a game played in padded leather helmets and without anything resembling rules, is going like gangbusters at America’s universities, but considered a joke for those few who do it professionally. One of those men is Jimmy “Dodge” Connolly (George Clooney), a handsome, aging jock who charges for touchdowns and tosses back shots of whiskey with equal aplomb. When Dodge’s team, the Duluth Bulldogs, is disbanded after losing their sponsor and the entire league appears ready to collapse, the shrewd Dodge throws a Hail Mary pass, convincing college football legend Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to play for the ragtag Bulldogs.
The dashing and debonair Rutherford is America’s favorite son, a decorated war hero who single-handedly managed the surrender of an entire platoon of German soldiers in World War I. Rutherford’s golden-boy status, combined with his unstoppable speed, makes him just the thing to finally catapult professional football into the national limelight. But not everyone is convinced. Spitfire, proto-feminist Chicago newswoman Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) thinks Rutherford’s rousing story is too good to be true and she’s bet her career that she can prove he’s a fraud. But even she cannot predict the effect her presence will have on the testosterone-slathered gridiron. The battle for supremacy moves off-field as Dodge and Rutherford become bitter rivals for Lexie’s capricious affections.
Leatherheads is the latest effort from Good Night, and Good Luck director George Clooney. Clooney, who has inherited the mantel of Cary Grant and wears it with comfortable ease, is perfect for this role and this time period. He bathes himself and his fellow actors in glowing, dappled light, gives closes attention to period details and employs composer Randy Newman for a superlative, jazzy score.
The only thing keeping Leatherheads from being a great movie versus simply a very good one is it’s pacing. Though Leatherheads isn’t a long movie, it may, at times, feel like one. Written like a screwball comedy of the 30s but edited like a modern comedy, the film is slow in several pivotal scenes when it should be sprinting toward the finish line. This is the sort of movie in which we shouldn’t be able to catch our breath. The snappy dialogue and witty one-liners don’t come fast enough, but they do come often.
Leatherheads is a commendable, frothy concoction, an echo of yesteryear that, even if it doesn’t quite succeed, stands as an admirable example of a time when comedy relied on dialogue more than action and made love with words rather than bodies. It reminds us why the Golden Age of Hollywood was, at times, very nearly blinding and points, albeit imperfectly, to a way in which it might be again.
© Copyright 2008 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.
