Leatherheads (2008) - C

"Leatherheads" is George Clooney's first misstep as a director. While I enjoyed both of the other movies he directed ("Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"), "Leatherheads" really never quite comes together. The movie is a romantic comedy set in the 1920's. Clooney plays "Dodge" Connelly, a professional football player. Unfortunately for Dodge, professional football is still in its infancy, and his team plays in front of very small crowds on a tiny field surrounded by cows. Meanwhile, college football, as represented by Princeton star Carter Rutherford, played by John Krasinski of "The Office," is thriving with gigantic crowds and beautiful stadiums. When it looks like his team is about to go bankrupt, Dodge comes up with the idea of recruiting Rutherford to play for his team, counting on his college star and war hero status to create giant crowds. Enter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellwegger), a reporter from Chicago. She has received a scoop that Carter's war heroics (he supposedly got a whole German squad to surrender by himself) are highly exaggerated. She follows the team, and cozies up to Rutherford, trying to find out the truth about his war experiences. Of course, her assignment is complicated by the fact that there's also a spark between her and Dodge.

Unfortunately for the movie, Zellwegger and Krasinski have almost no chemistry. The chemistry between Zellwegger and Clooney is a little better, but it doesn't exactly set the screen on fire either. As a result, there are long stretches of the movie that are really flat (after the movie was over, the people I saw it with were startled to find out that the running time was under two hours, since it felt MUCH longer). Then there's the inexplicable decision to have the climax of the movie be a football game that is so amazingly boring, that several of the characters feel obliged to point out that the game is ridiculously boring. Not exactly the recipe for a stirring finish. There are just enough fun scenes between Dodge and Lexie that I can't say the movie sucked, but I definitely do not recommend it.

Final Grade: C