Leatherheads goes long… too long

Oh, how the 1920s always look so beautiful in Hollywood period pieces. The films are lighted with rich amber hues and scored to the music of Al Jolson. Everyone wears fedoras and tailored suits, the speakeasies have great jazz singers and fistfights that don’t look too painful, and the cars are shiny and the streets are always clean. The 1920s set the scene for George Clooney’s third directorial effort, Leatherheads. And while the movie is long and only fitfully amusing, boy…it sure looks great.

Clooney is Jimmy “Dodge” Connelly, the captain of the not-very-talented Bulldogs football team. On the verge of a collapse, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), a decorated war hero, emerges as the most popular figure in college football. Dodge convinces his superiors to recruit Carter, who brings in thousands of fans to the bleachers. But there’s trouble beyond the gridiron: an ambitious sports reporter (Renée Zellweger) has heard that Carter may not be the war hero he’s cracked up to be. Of course, a love triangle ensues.

Clooney, who has appeared in several of the Coen brothers’ comedies, seems to be channeling the Coens’ comic sensibility. He fills Leatherheads with a lot of broad, cartoon-like characters, and self-conscious references to past films, particularly the screwball comedies of the 1930s and ’40s starring Hepburn and Tracy. The humour shifts between aggressively quirky visual gags (one of the football team members is a 300-pound highschooler, ho ho) and witty dialogue, as Clooney and Zellweger trade rapid-fire comic banter. While Clooney is always an enjoyable actor with decent comic timing, Renée Zellweger is miscast. Her role calls for a ballsy, Rosalind Russell type, and low-key Zellweger isn’t up to the task. John Krasinski, from The Office, is pure vanilla in a very vanilla role.

Leatherheads runs an ungainly 114 minutes, at least 20 minutes longer than the average screwball. The climactic football scene feels drawnout, particularly following the logical ending. When a story has so little substance, is it too much to ask that it wrap up after 90 minutes?

Leatherheads wants to bring back memories of the storied ’30s screwball, but where those films felt spontaneous, this work is posturing. It’s as if Clooney wanted to emulate the tradition by constantly winking at the camera. The insincerity of Leatherheads becomes quite alienating. Yet it’s hard to hate it entirely. There is something about Clooney’s screen presence that’s kind of seductive, even if it doesn’t quite gel. There’s also something intriguing about the film’s hyperfetishized time capsule. Even the mud on the football field looks beautiful. A lot of skilled technicians have done a very good job creating this cinematic wax museum.