Official Synopsis:
Academy Award® winners George Clooney and Renée Zellweger team up in this fun-filled comedy set against the beginnings of pro football. Dodge Connelly (Clooney), captain of a struggling squad of barroom brawlers, has only one hope to save his team: recruit college superstar Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski, The Office). But when a feisty reporter (Zellweger) starts snooping around, she turns the two teammates into instant rivals and kicks off a wild competition filled with hilarious screwball antics! Critics are cheering Leatherheads as "a real winner" (Claudia Puig, USA Today).

Our Take:
I really wanted to love Leatherheads. Even though it didn’t do well at the box office, I remember seeing the trailer for the film and thinking that it looked really fun and charming. I’m a big George Clooney fan, and I hoped that the film would capture the screwball comedy vibe it seemed to be aiming for. Unfortunately, it falls a bit short of its goals.

Directed by Clooney, Leatherheads is based on the true story of the beginnings of professional football. The film comes across like a mix between His Girl Friday and Some Like it Hot (and set in  a typical sports film), but it doesn’t succeed anywhere near on the level that those films do. Clooney and Renee Zellweger have a nice rapid-fire patter exchange that is cute, but the film’s main problem is that it just isn’t nearly as funny as it needs to be. At almost two hours in length, there are some pacing issues, and there just aren’t enough laughs to fill out the running time. I like the film, but it’s disappointing how I can see a great film below the surface that just can’t break through.

Extra features include:

* Feature Commentary - With Clooney and producer Grant Heslov.

* Deleted Scenes
* Football's Beginning: The Making of Leatherheads
* No Pads, No Fear: Creating the Rowdy Football Scenes
* George Clooney: A Leatherheaded Prankster
* Visual Effects Sequences

Leatherheads is worth a rental if you like the talent involved, but it simply isn’t the movie that it wants to be. There’s absolutely nothing bad about it, but it’s the kind of film you forget about the minute it’s over.

Overall Picture:
Movie: C
DVD: C+

- Mike Spring

Editor