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Capone Likes LEATHERHEADS More Than He Dislikes It...
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
George Clooney loves period films. He loves the look, the colors (or the black & white, in the case of GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK), the language, the different codes of conduct and the music. In his third film as a director, Clooney goes further back than either of his previous efforts (A DANGEROUS MIND; and GOOD NIGHT), into the 1920s when college football ruled sports, and professional football was played on empty farm fields with virtually no rules or fans to watch. Clooney plays Dodge Connolly, an almost over-the-hill player for a Duluth, Minnesota team on the verge of going bust. Most football fans are following the exploits of Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski of "The Office"), a speedy runner with a million-dollar smile and a record as a war hero with a story of true bravery to back it up. Clooney's fellow players look to him to save the franchise, and he comes up with the crazy idea of essentially renting Rutherford and having him play part of the season with the Duluth team in exchange for a great deal of money for The Bullet and his shady agent CC (Jonathan Pryce).
While this wheeling and dealing is going on, the only reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Lexie Littleton (the razor-tongued Renée Zellweger), is investigating a rumor that Rutherford's war record may have been fudged a bit, and a story about an entire group of German soldiers surrendering to him may be slightly inaccurate. Posing as a sports reporter who might also be falling for the golden boy, Lexie is determined to get to the bottom of her story. Meanwhile Dodge might also be falling for the lovely and witty reporter, which almost guarantees fisticuffs between the two men are on the bill.
Portions of LEATHERHEADS are more interesting and/or entertaining than others. The film works best when Clooney and company tell the story of the changing game of football, about what happened when money started pouring into the professional side of the sport and rules played a much bigger factor. As one commentator in the film notes, things got boring once rules entered the game. The chronicle of the rise and attempted taking down of a sports hero echoes a lot of what's been happening in sports these days, and there's some strange comfort in knowing this is an age-old tradition. I also liked the scenes that conveyed a sense of time and place—the old steam trains on which the team traveled; the speakeasies they frequented; and the looks of the crusty sports writers the minute a woman steps into their hallowed booth.
LEATHERHEADS fails when it tries to hard to be funny. In the scene where Clooney and Zellweger first square off, the dialog (from writers Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly) is sharp and funny. Later in the film, as the pair escape from a drinking establishment during a police raid, the film resorts to slapstick humor that is so out of place in this movie it took me completely out of the moment. I know what Clooney was going for--a sort of tribute to comedies of the era--but the effort falls flat on its face, more than once. There's a prolonged Chicago bar fight late in the film that also goes limp as soon as the first punch in thrown. Clooney is a strong enough director to know this sort of thing isn't going to work, and for his efforts he comes across like an amateur. I know a lot of people on this planet don't like Zellweger, and I'm not exactly sure why. She's fantastic here as a woman who is only in her element when she's deeply out of her element. Clooney probably overestimates the interest audiences will have in the film's love triangle storyline, but Zellweger's fine performance keeps things hopping.
Still, I liked more of LEATHERHEADS than I disliked, I'm giving it a mild recommendation. I loved the look of the film, the attention to time-appropriate detail, and the way Clooney as an actor didn't fall back on his good looks and natural charm as often as he could have. Dodge is a worn-out player, and the years show on Clooney's face. I've grown to truly look forward to every project this guy is attached to, and I love that his next scheduled film as a director is a piece written by the Coen brothers. I can almost forgive the missteps he's made with LEATHERHEADS knowing that better things are to come.
Capone
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Clooney sucks.
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hopefully this one has a great song.
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She's all squint and anorexia. She's thoroughly unappealing to look at on the screen.
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um....that..stil...is the way it is. in america anyway.
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sometimes she can almost pass for cute- like in nurse betty- but the other 99% of the time it looks like she's really trying to hold in a girl-fart.
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I don't know what the hell happened to her face since Jerry Maguire, but that woman looks twice her age.
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Then what the FUCK happened as they say.
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Apr 04, 2008 10:36:45 AM CDT
I'd still fuck her Jellyfish style, see her on letterman?
by donwillymo
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And, for some strange reason, the Bridget Jones movies. I might have a thing for chubby, desperate English chicks. Anyhoo, she's a decent actress.
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Not really. Don't get me wrong, College Football is very popular, but the NFL rules all. No sport can compete with it in terms of profits and popularity. And I talking just in the context of American sports, not soccer.
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It would squint like Gilbert Godfrey.
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i guess i probably do need to get out a bit, but in ga ALLLLLLLL we hear about is GA, AL, FL SC and NC college football. they are seriously far more popular than the NFL.
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It's the only explanation for Zellwigger getting romantic leads at this point. She may have some acting skills, but by and large if you're drunk enough to fuck her, you're too drunk to fuck. Beyond the physical aspect of it, she has zero chemistry and no charisma to me. Just can't suspend my disbelief into thinking a man would want her.
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...light and matter would not be able to escape the pull of it's squint, and the universe would be sucked into it's tight little face.
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That's true. SEC football is pretty huge and far more established than any pro footballs teams are, or will ever be considering the pro teams we are talking about in that area. I guess I need to amend my previous statement since it's really a regional thing.
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I used to think she was cute though.
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desparate housewifes on Sunday night. She's been pulled or prodded more than most.
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In the time frame of Nurse Betty & she came across as smart/witty to me on Jay Leno around then, too. Then, there was that marriage debacle w/that country star whats-his-name & that was the start of the process for me viewing her as strange & a little off & she just seems lackluster, anymore. Clooney? - well, I'm w/South Park on that dude.
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only 22 posts all day and most of them pickin' on renee! hope she doesn't read this, i'd feel bad.
Renee, put on a little bit of the love padding again, bring the bunny suit, and i'll hold you while the tears shoot out of your scrunched eyes. -
With as much as the media loves to ass kiss Clooney, his movie would have to be 100% runny shit to get less than an "Outstanding!" from them.
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Why do producers keep hiring him?
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That's all.
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to NOT recommend a movie that you say you loved.As for why some people don't like ms. Zellweger, Jews aren't allowed to eat pork. I'm saying she's kinda piggy-faced.
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i kid you not.
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Well, it fits the period: You DID have Ted Healy & his Stooges doing knockabout farce on the vaudeville stage around that time. Leatherheads would be a riot just for ONE instance of three of the football players rushing off the field with a hearty "Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo!" like Curly Howard.
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A lot of film students are like that. But the problem is, modern-day audiences don't care for old-style movie storytelling. I think the only ones who have been successful at this, if you can call it this, "genre" (retro Golden Age cinema style) are the Coens.
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You make it sound like a bad thing.
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Let me start off with this: I love George Clooney's pre-Iraq war movies (except Batman and Robin, which until then was his only real blunder). I went into this movie expecting a decent comedy about the rise of football. I knew the angle about the investigation of the war hero from Capone's review, and was OK with that. But every single U.S. soldier depicted in this film is a dirt bag save one, and there are a lot of soldiers portrayed in it.
The first half of the movie was decent, and I found myself chuckling along. Then the movie turned into a Clooney political rant against the U.S. military. Spoiler ahead, if anyone cares:
First the story about the war hero being exaggerated turns out to be true. This didn't offend me, because during a war things do get exaggerated and America does look for heroes to justify our involvement in the war (Jessica Lynch story, or Pat Tilman are good examples). Once Carter, the football player/war hero was outed he became a total weasel. The soldier who first outed him to the newspaper then takes a bribe and retracts his story at a news conference. He was the officer under whom Carter served. He became o tatl weasel as well by accepting the bribe and blaming the reporter (Zellweger) for distorting his words Turns out he was a dirt bag as well. Then Clooney meats up with a large group of soldiers celebrating in Chicago. This group is rowdy, loud and obnoxious, and proceeds to grab a pre-teen boy who is cheering for Clooney's football team instead of Chicago, who the soldiers are cheering for. The group of soldiers (8-10 of them) proceed to grab this small boy from the table with his parents and are going to beat the crap out of him until Clooney steps in to save the day. Clooney stands up to the soldiers and a bar room brawl breaks out. It is only stopped when one of the soldiers ends up being an old friend of Clooney's. They seperate themselves from the rest of the crowd, and patch things up and all end up drinking the night away together. Just minutes before this guy was with the group that was going to beat the crap out of the little boy! It seems Clooney's problem is that he thinks soldiers are dirt bags as a whole or unit, but a few individuals (in this movie 1 out of about 12 soldiers portrayed in the movie) are OK if they are alone and not acssociated with the military organization!
being a 17 yr member of the US Air Force, I was deeply offended by this portrayal. I was duped into watching one of Clooney's political rants disguised as a comedy about the rise of professional football. I think Universal Pictures and Geroge Clooney owe me $17.50 (I took my two pre-teen sons, who also thought it was a football comedy).
The trailer and the media have made quite a bit of effort to minimize the discredited war hero angle and are marketing this a comedy/love triangle story, with little mention that 1/3 to 1/2 of the movie is about Carter's and his agent's attempt to hide what really happened during his stint in the war. Plus at the end the US Congress steps in and assigns a commissioner to pro-football, and Clooney has to stand up to him as well. I guess it was his stab at being a loner standing up to the U.S. Government.
Once word gets out that this movie is not what it was advertised, and really isn't that good, I predict this will be another tank at the box office for the once bright Clooney. -
meat, instead of meet, o tatl instead of total, etc. My heated typing got the best of me!
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very very disappointing. Zellweger was particularly underwhelming. The dialog was so slow and the comic timing so bad, I almost felt like it was to make sure everyone in the audience got the joke. "Did you miss that? Well we will talk extremely slow to make sure the slow ones in the theater understood." Its like closed captioning for the stupid. Not to mention Clooney really phoned it in with his directing. What a shame, it was a great idea for a film.
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There were indeed some things to admire here. The look of the movie was perfect. There were some funny lines here and there and some good supporting performances. A lot of "O, Brother" alumni were in this flick.
But overall, it was a disappointment. It was marketed as a football movie, and yet football was merely an occasional diversion in what was a basically boring love triangle. And when there WERE football scenes, they were horrendously dull. I mean,I know the game in that era was dull anyway by today's standards, but come on, Clooney. There was zero excitement in the game sequences, except for perhaps the twist at the end, which,while pretty unbelievable, was amusing.
Wayyyyy too long, too. Geez, was I ready for this one to end. The only thing that could've totally saved it would have been a long Michael Clayton-like lingering shot on Clooney's face in his leather helmet while the credits rolled....then again...nah...
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