Leatherheads (2008)

Academy Award® winners George Clooney and Ren e 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).System Requirements:Running Time: 114 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/BUDDY FILMS Rating: PG-13 UPC: 025195012935 Manufacturer No: 61101581 Product Description

Bulldogs and Pigskins

Harken back to the days when professional football was played on muddy fields by players who would rather brawl than run the gridiron with grace and the scoreboard was hard to see under the huge shadow cast by the major college game.

George Clooney - director, producer, "co-writer" - stars in this comedy about the fictional Duluth Bulldogs (in the early NFL years, there was the Duluth Eskimos and Canton Bulldogs) and a league on the verge of financial ruin. The fate of pro football hinges on the signing of a former college superstar who is a combat hero.

With the characters loosely based on iconic figures from the early years of the NFL - George "Papa Bear" Halas, John "Blood" McNally, Red Grange - Clooney, as team captain Dodge Connolly, weaves the pursuit of star Carter "the Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski), with the chase for attention from Lexie Littleton, a Chicago news reporter (Renée Zellweger).

The slapstick draws from the 1920s-era films that had football as its backdrop, but the climax is the universal debate by fans of big market versus small market, with "free agency" in the controversy. It is a fun gridiron film that refuses to get too serious.
October 1, 2008

Leatherheads - Blu-ray Info

Version: U.S.A / Region Free
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
VC-1 BD-25
Running time: 1:53:43
Movie size: 22,61 GB
Disc size: 23,26 GB
Average video bit rate: 17.17 Mbps
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 24-bit English
DTS 5.1 Spanish / French

Subtitles: English / English SDH / French / Spanish

#U-Control - BonusView
#Audio Commentary With Director George Clooney and Producer Grant Heslov
#My Scenes - Bookmarks September 29, 2008

Middle of the pack look at the early days of pro football

It's hard to determine what was really needed to make this a better film, but something... that one magic ingredient... surely is missing and without it this movie finds itself solidly in the middle of the pack. It's not bad, but far from great, leaving a 3 star recommendation for those that want to know if this film is worth nearly 2 hours of their time.

Leatherheads was promoted (in trailers) as a screwball comedy and I suppose it tries to achieve that on some levels, but it never quite delivers on that promise as it tries to include a love story and a story of a hero that perhaps shouldn't be a hero at all, and oh, yeah, it also tries to tell a story about football back in the days of leather helmets being played in front of few fans in places that wouldn't be thought of as being historically significant to the game. In some ways this seems to be a football version of the Will Ferrell film: Semi-pro. It's got the screwed up players, the faltering league, the guy with the plan, and other formulaic elements that were simply transferred from the basketball story over to a story about professional football.

Clooney does well, and John Krasinski isn't bad either. Rene Zellweger is ok in the obligatory role as the femme fatale reporter that is looking for the real story behind Krasinski's would be hero. Outside of those characters, and Jonathan Pryce's role, the rest of the performances and players are ok though none really stand-out.

George Clooney directed this film and seems to have achieved an apparent goal of delivering a nostalgic experience, though the images are often what some would call bland, dusty or muddy. There's plenty of detail, but the color palette is meant to present a nostalgic appearance and oh, yeah, also is often focused on a football field where players are getting muddy and dirty.

Worth a rental, but the buy-it recommendation would seem to be outside the value that seems to be delivered here. September 28, 2008

Worth a look

I'm giving this 5 stars to make up for the 1 star reviews given this movie. It certainly is not the best movie of the year......but it's worth the hour & a half. It's an entertaining story with a satisfying ending. There's a few "laugh out loud" moments and a lot of heart in most scenes. I agree that it's quickly forgotten, but you will enjoy the time spent. September 25, 2008

"Play by the Rules"

George Clooney must like making vintage movies because when left to his own devices, that's what he does. Besides the noir must be back. `Married Life,' `The Black Dahlia (Full Screen Edition),' and `The Good German' all point in that direction.

Put all the components of `Leatherheads' together: a screwball comedy, old fashioned brawls, and a sassy female reporter looking for the best scoop, and you're in for a good, old-fashioned time.

For this outing George Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, an aging football player, barely financing The Bulldogs, his Duluth, MN team. When his business goes belly up, he and his fellow players go back to manual labor. Until one day while listening to the radio, he hears a broadcast of a Princeton game that draws a crowd of 40,000. Persuasively, he talks "The Warrior Hero," Carter "Bullet" Rutherford (John Krazinski) and his agent C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) into a lucrative offer to join his team and take a college leave of absence. At the same time, savvy newspaper reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger is assigned to investigate Carter on a rumor that his legendary story in "The Great War" is a hoax.

Clooney directed this film, and his skills to transport us to another era are spot on. Speakeasy bars, vintage press scenes, and old-fashioned meeting rooms are done well without lingering over every detail. Some of the movie's best lines are given in the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn exchanges between Clooney and Zellwiger (or make that Cary Grant and Mae West). Maybe the final football game scenes won't be the most exciting in cinema history, but some of the wittiest dialogue of the year have come from this film, giving the comedy genre a much needed boost. If that's not reason enough to see this movie, then nothing else is.

A J.P.'s Pick 3*'s = Good September 25, 2008

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