Early Review of Leatherheads (2008)

 

Leatherheads is a movie that will make no lasting impressions on you. A lot of smart and snappy dialog make the film entertaining to watch, but ultimately it’s nothing special.

Geroge Clooney plays Jimmy the Dodge Connolly who desperately wants to legitimize professional football.  Set in the 1920’s, football is viewed more something as joke, and not at all taken seriously. Looking at several different options to change this, Connolly recruits war hero and college football sensation Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to help save his sport.

Rutherford and Connolly approach the came from completely different directions. Rutherford takes the game seriously and views it as an art rather then Connolly’s dirty and “anything to win” view of the game.

This movie sat frozen while studio after studio passed on the script, George Clooney ended up rewriting the entire thing and turning it into more of the slapstick comedy we have today. Clooney felt the movie was to dry and boring to ever be developed for film. Reportedly he only kept a few scenes intact that were written by the original screenwriters (who still have the only credit billing on the movie).

Even after all of Clooney’s revisions the movie still comes off as an occasionally funny film with extremely talented actors. Stephen Root is wonderful as Suds and John Krasinski is very funny as Rutherford. The movie is worth a rental if you like sports movies, otherwise, it’s to be avoided.