Pretty Good

hyped garbage

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I heard somewhere that the target audience for this movie was 50-80 year olds and I'm not surprised as it is a complete throwback to a different era when people behaved very differently and slapstick movies like this were popular. And for one this reviewer really enjoyed it. I know I will be in the minority, but so what.Plot In A Paragraph: In 1925. Dodge Connolly (George Clooney) a charming football hero, is determined to guide his team to the top. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his team. Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) America's golden-boy war hero who single- handedly forced multiple German soldiers to surrender in WWI, Carter is good on the field too, reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) believes he is too good to be true, and aims to prove it. However she finds herself drawn to both men and the two teammates start to become off-field rivals. Clooney seems really at home in movies set in a bygone era (see "O Brother Were Art Thou" and appears to be having a lot of fun here. Zellweger has a certain charm and Krasinski more than holds his own against two superior actors.I'm not sure about the hate aimed at this movie, I think the people who hate on it, clearly didn't understand it. And that is saying something as its not a complicated movie. I found it well directed, charming, funny and an enjoyable way to spend a rainy afternoon.

George Clooney does double duty here as he stars and takes the director's seat in "Leatherheads" set in the roaring mid-twenties after the Great War. Clooney plays the role of Coach Dodge Donnelly who's a veteran in the sport of football. While a lot of the football teams are progressively becoming defunct, Donnelly the ever-so-optimistic person believes that football can flourish by making it professional and could potentially draw record-breaking crowds.Dodge feels that crowds will likely be drawn if they saw players who are masters of their craft and are actually getting paid while their performing.Renee Zellweger is the female lead here as a determined reporter, Lexie Littleton who's interviewing a young, handsome college football star who also happens to be a war hero named Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) Lexie only meet Donnelly only by a sheer twist of irony. Donnelly sees stars in this dashing young star and hopes that his fan following comes with him as well. Lexie wants to interview Rutherford to know more about him so while they await for this young upstart, they exchange some witty words with each other.Rutherford decides to give pro-football a try and surely enough, his tribe of followers gather around as the sport of football becomes increasing in popularity. As Rutherford becomes a touchdown machine, the sport itself became more rejuvenated than it has ever been. Sadly like in all movies, good things are not always what they seem to be. From Lexie's interviews and research, we're soon to discover that Rutherford is not the war hero that everyone claims he is. After using under-handed tactics to seek the truth about Rutherford, Lexie discovers that during the war, Rutherford gave up his fight to the Germans and his Company caught him in the act and all the facts have been sadly misconstrued. Lexi, being so honest is determined to leak the truth about Rutherford which would potentially ruin his good name, ruin his career and kill the sport of professional football for good.Sure you'd think that with a stellar cast that has Zellweger, Clooney and Krasinski in the leads it's going to be a great period piece film with lots of detailed history and plenty of nostalgia. Right? Wrong! The only real good qualities about "Leatherheads" is the soft soothing sounds of music from the 1920's. Songs you'll surely like to hum along to as you struggle to settle down to this movie. Another positive note is that the scenery is very sublime. That's about all that is good about "Leatherheads". Don't take my word for it, there was a patron more interesting in scarfing down his food and going back to the lobby for more, another man next to me snoozed the whole time and me I was just counting the hours until this film ended.The only two thespians that stood out from the boring bunch are Clooney and Zellweger who seem to engage in some pretty interesting dialogue and are the only ones who seem to have the only funny lines in this movie. Krasinski was very wooden and stoic and seem to lacking in any kind of team spirit. There's nothing engaging about him and is only on to look like an idiot.Some of the fight scenes are almost laughable (and not in a good way) and show no importance to the movie at all. Even Rutherford and Donnelly get into a confrontation over Lexie's faux affections and even if they threw fists at each other 100 times, they should have at least drawn some blood or bruised after one blow.For the jocks watching this to see some good ol' football, well forget it, the scenes were both awkward and disjointed. Even the last scene lacks in any significant climax to it. Rutherford gets traded to Chicago and his idle worshippers go along with him. And Donnelly and Rutherford's team duke in out in the mud like pigs fighting in a sty and the always tiresome story plods to who wins this epic game. It doesn't seem to tie in with the movie and the scenes are quite dull.All I can say is that "Leatherheads" is film that truly is mostly style and nothing substantial about it. I felt like I wasn't drawn to the characters and I felt like I dd not care what happens to them. With the only good performances by Clooney and Zellwager and the soothing musical score, I can not recommend this movie to anyone.

Like a lot of people, I never bothered with this film when it came out in the cinemas because of the negative reviews that it got. Likewsie when it came to DVD it sat at the bottom end of my rental list waiting for me to want to watch it. Eventually I did and initially I thought that the reviews had been unfairly harsh because the film seemed like it was going to be a light and sparky sports period piece that captures the screwball comedies of years gone by. This is how it starts but unfortunately it is not how it continues. It is not like, at some point the film suddenly gets "bad" (it doesn't) but more that it doesn't quite have the sparkle or life that the trimmings all suggest that it will.In terms of capturing the period, it does a great job – or at least it does a great job of continuing the nostalgic idea of the period. It does this with a cool jazz soundtrack, good costumes and the suggestion of the snappy dialogue that the screwball movies are known for. I say suggestion because of the places where the film doesn't have the zing that it needed is in the script. It does have its moments though and it is quite fun at times but mostly it feels like it is just falling short of where it should be. It has a couple of things that don't help this either. Firstly it is too long, maybe not for the plot (it doesn't "drag" per se) but certainly for the light tone. Secondly, the romance aspect of the plot doesn't really work, which is partly down to the casting of Zellweger.Where Clooney fits the bill as a "too-cute by half" square-jawed matinée star, Zellweger cannot convincingly deliver her lines in a way that works. I think of Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker Proxy – she did an impression of an actress in a screwball comedy that was pretty good and looking at that shows up how ill-suited Zellweger is. I know people dislike her on principle but I am not one of them, I just thought she was pretty poor here. Krasinski is good in his role even if, to be frank, he didn't do anything that suggested he has more than the range of characterisation that he has already shown on The Office – and that should be of concern to his "people" since he will soon need to breakout of that show as it cannot run forever. The supporting cast has plenty of interesting and recognisable faces who do solid work.Leatherheads is not a terrible comedy as some have suggested and it should not be criticised for being inconsequential or light. Sadly though it is not frothy, sparky or fun enough to be the film that it was clearly intended to be. OK there are specific issues with aspects of the plot and some (well, one) bit of casting but generally this bigger picture problem is what limits it to be an "OK" film but no better than that.

A lot of the negative reviews here concentrate on the historical accuracy of this film. OK, it had about as much to do with the actual NFL as your average war movie has to do with an actual war, or a Western has to do with the true "old west". So, I think we should give them an artistic license pass on that one.The problem here is, the director (Clooney) apparently thinks that making a screwball comedy means a) do stupid things, b) mug for the camera, and c) take stupid scenes full of mugging and stretch them out way too long. Screwball comedies need a fast pace, not necessarily frenetic, but moving briskly along at all times. Here, things drag, and drag, and drag. After you watch this movie, it will make you appreciate how brilliant Mack Sennett was when he pretty much pioneered the genre with his Keystone Cops. After 90 years, you would think that directors would have studied the old masters and learned a thing or two, maybe even improved on things a bit. But no, it's as if someone had watched an automobile pioneer build a Duesenberg, and nearly a century later, paid homage and "improved" on the concept by cobbling together a child's wagon with square wheels.I've enjoyed several of Clooney's movies, I consider him a gifted actor. But very few actors can competently direct themselves; Clint Eastwood notably took a while to get the hang of it. Clooney is clearly at the bottom of a very steep slope. The movie becomes more watchable during the very few times he is out of the frame, but when he's in the picture, he makes himself the centre of attention. In the fight scenes, his mugging is so obnoxious you wish somebody would thump him for real.If you are making a screwball comedy and want some romance thrown in, you need to develop some chemistry between the male and female leads. Clooney and Zellweger have all the chemistry of pair of dumpsters sitting in a parking lot. No spark, no sizzle, not even a post-mortem twitch. Zellweger, who has also turned out some pretty good movies, must have traded her botox injections for oak tannin, giving a stunningly wooden performance. She might just have pulled off the "tough broad in a man's world" act if just once, while trying to out-testosterone the guys, she had looked into the camera with a little half-smile and twinkle in her eye. But no, she kept her jockstrap cinched up tight to the very end.Of course, the biggest sin here is that the movie simply isn't funny. Doing stupid things is not the same as slapstick. Doing stupid things very inventively, like the Stooges, or very athletically, like Buster Keaton, can be hilarious. But otherwise it's boring and, well, stupid. I think I got one good laugh out of the entire movie.Avoid this one. I saw it for free on cable, and still wanted my money back.