Leatherheads
Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
Let's start this off with a little rant. This is April. The baseball season just started. Basketball is heading for the playoffs. "Leatherheads" is a period movie about football set in the fall. Why release it now? Who cares about football in the spring? Why not wait for, say, August when fans are starting to get the football itch? I'm just saying. If you're reading this in the fall and the DVD just came out . . . never mind.
The Story
George Clooney (who also directs) stars as Dodge Connelly, an aging pro football guy in an era (1925) before anyone really cares about pro football. Most of the teams are broke, and the games are played in cow pastures before crowds of dozens. Dodge's team, the Duluth Bulldogs, is folding up after just beginning to get things together. All the guys go back to jobs working in fields and mines and factories.
Meanwhile, WWI war hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski from "The Office") is drawing crowds of 40,000 for Princeton football games. After returning from "the great war" having forced a platoon of Germans into surrendering, the popular Carter dominates the college football game and ads for shaving equipment. But a plucky reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), has a hot tip that the hero's war story is fishy. So she sets out to do a profile on him with a surprise revelation about the truth behind his war record.
Desperate to get back into football, Dodge (Clooney) approaches Carter and his wily agent (Jonathan Pryce) with an idea. What if Carther dropped out of Princeton to play pro ball? Imagine the crowds they could attract? Imagine what they could do for the game? Carter agrees to join the quickly revamped Duluth Bulldogs while both he and Dodge begin to fall for Lexie. All the while, Lexie is working to pry the truth out of Carter about his war glory and Dodge is trying to figure out how he fits into the newly popular game of pro football.
The Verdict
What Works: I like the idea of this movie a lot. I'm a fan of those 30s screwball comedies that Clooney and his team are hoping to imitate. If you haven't seen any of them, check out "His Girl Friday," "Bringing Up Baby," "It Happened One Night," or "The Philadelphia Story." They all feature lightning-fast dialogue, crazy scenarios, tough-talking career gals, and often a love triangle between three great leads. Clooney has all the pieces -- a likable cast, a nice screwball-style plot, decent writing, great chemistry between the players, an authentic 30s look and feel, and a great soundtrack. But . . .
What Doesn't Work: . . . it feels like the whole thing is unfolding in slow motion and going on too long (nearly two hours). I've seen interviews with Clooney where he's talking about how fast the actors need to talk to make this kind of film work -- so why don't they talk faster? There's way too much space between the lines most of the time, as well as the plot points -- and without the insane pacing, a screwball comedy is just a . . . slow, obvious, repetitive comedy. At the best, it could be called "leisurely." It's a film that's pleasant enough to hang out with as long as you don't have anywhere else to be.
I kept wondering what the film might have been like if the Coen brothers had directed it. Clooney's movie kind of follows the pattern of one of my favorite of their films, "The Hudsucker Proxy," but it never captures the spirit of that experience. And it's never clear, exactly, where the movie is taking us. What are the stakes? What will the characters gain or lose depending on the outcome of the final, endless game in the mud? It winds up with a fun moment, but I'm still not sure why it mattered.
Content: Characters do a lot of illegal drinking and getting drunk, along with some swearing (including a couple of uses of God and Jesus' name for swearing).
Worldview
As and actor and director, Clooney has become famous for his message movies. With "Leatherheads," he is specifically avoiding politics to just have some fun. If you dig a little, you can come up with a worldview about the cost of lying to build your reputation -- though the movie doesn't push the idea. One character suffers (to a point) for an ongoing deception. Wisdom agrees that any gains made by deception often turn bitter in the end.
The other major perspective on hand has to do with the loss of the simple childlike innocence of playing for fun. Dodge and his buddies just love the game football. They love to run and tackle and compete and get dirty. They don't mind if it gets rough, and they expect that everyone will be creative with the rules. But for them to keep playing the game as grown men, the game has to make money. And for the game to make money, there has to be rules and organization, and it really, really has to matter who wins. The game becomes more like work, and some of the simple joy of playing is lost.
For Christians, the Bible urges us both to hold on to some childlike traits and to grow up and let go of others. To come to faith in Christ, Jesus said "we must become like little children," humbling ourselves and trusting God like a little kid naturally trusts his parents. (See Matthew 18:1-4) On the other hand, Paul tells us that when he became a man, he "put away" childish immaturity, in part, by learning to what it means to love as unselfishly as God does. (Check out the end of 1 Corinthians 13.)
As an actor -- and especially in this role -- Clooney is fun to watch because he manages to capture both that sense of childlike playfulness and grown-up masculine maturity. God also calls His children to live in the real world with a balance of innocent faith and grown-up, self-sacrificing love.
Questions
- Why do you think they released this football movie at the start of baseball season? Does that matter to you, or is it just me?
- Are you a fan of fast-talking screwball comedies? What are some of your favorites? How did "Leatherheads" stack up?
- Do you think John Krasinski from "The Office" is going to end up as a big movie star? Did you like him in this? Does he fit better on TV?
- Is it ever wise to use deception to build your reputation? Why can that be so destructive?
- How can we maintain the balance between childlike faith and playfulness and the grown-up maturity of obeying God, loving Him, and loving others?