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MOVIES / IN CINEMAS / LEATHERHEADS
Leatherheads

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Leatherheads (2008)

53%
50%
60%
N/A
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53 %
Reviews Counted: 139 Fresh: 73  Rotten:66 Average Rating: 5.9/10
 
Consensus: Half screwball and half fumble. Despite a good premise and strong cast, this pro football romcom is half screwball and half fumble. more
 
Rated: PG
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Theatrical Release: 11-04-2008
Synopsis:
From his casual charm to his cleft chin, George Clooney has frequently drawn comparisons to an actor of another age: Cary Grant. With his third directorial effort, the Oscar winner pays homage to the style of films that helped make Grant famous, such as BRINGING UP BABY and HIS GIRL FRIDAY. In... [More]
From his casual charm to his cleft chin, George Clooney has frequently drawn comparisons to an actor of another age: Cary Grant. With his third directorial effort, the Oscar winner pays homage to the style of films that helped make Grant famous, such as BRINGING UP BABY and HIS GIRL FRIDAY. In 1925, when LEATHERHEADS takes place, professional football is a joke, especially when compared to its more respected college cousin. Teams across the country are folding, and player Dodge Connelly (Clooney) will do anything to keep his own team, the Duluth Bulldogs, from folding. The enterprising (read: scheming) Dodge steals Princeton star and war hero Carter Ruthford (John Krasinski, THE OFFICE) from his school, and soon the Bulldogs are winning, but it's the game of football that is the real champion as fans pack the stadiums. Meanwhile, reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) begins investigating Rutherford's past, thanks to a tip from one of the star's old war buddies that he may not be all he seems. The pre-regulation football is dirty, but it's far cleaner than the action when Dodge and Carter vie for Lexie's affections. From the classic Universal logo that opens the film, Clooney firmly sets his film in the sepia-toned past. His lightning-fast dialogue is certainly reminiscent of the repartee between Grant and costars such as Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell. But as much as he owes to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and '40s, he also is mining the same vein that his frequent collaborators, the Coen Brothers, did in films such as THE HUDSUCKER PROXY and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. Clooney's previous directorial efforts--CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND and GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK--were also both stylish films set in the past, but LEATHERHEADS is a more fun, mainstream work. [Less]

Genre: Comedies

Starring: George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce

Director: George Clooney
Screenwriter: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly
Producer: Grant Heslov, Casey Silver
Composer: Randy Newman

Reviews

 
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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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Ratings Image

What starts as a thoroughly enjoyable screwball romp ... gets bogged down in some over-ambitious plotting and serious themes as it goes along

Full Review | Comment
04/20/08 03:47 PM
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall
Ratings Image

An amiable, good looking if largely inconsequential comedy that coasts on its stars' charms.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 09:25 AM
Leigh Singer
Channel 4 Film
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
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Is it a romantic comedy? A sporting history lesson? A homage to Howard Hawks? It’s all three. Not the touchdown we expected after Good Night, And Good Luck, but still enough style, sophistication and movie-love to save Clooney from a kicking.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 09:06 AM
Rob James
Total Film
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It's good-looking, good-natured and sophisticated, but Leatherheads can't choose between football biopic or screwball romance.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 08:20 AM
Laura Bushell
BBC
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
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By the final touchdown, there is enough to like and - let's face it - we'll always take time out for twinkly-eyed George.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 07:14 AM
Tim Evans
Sky Movies
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The movie gets lots of things right, yet it fumbles key facets so badly that you simply can’t christen it the gridiron version of ‘His Girl Friday’.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 04:56 AM
David Fear
Time Out
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On paper it looks like a gem – roaring 20s setting, verbal fireworks and a silly sport in its rude infancy. In practice, it's way off the pace, far too slow for its screwball pretensions and the kind of film that confuses pastiche with period detail.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 04:37 AM
Simon Braund
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
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Clooney's third movie as director is his weakest.

Full Review | Comment
05/04/08 01:13 AM
Bob Grimm
Tucson Weekly
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Leatherheads shoots for the Frank Capra/Howard Hawks goal posts but instead winds up getting bogged down midfield.

Full Review | Comment
05/01/08 05:53 PM
Alonso Duralde
MSNBC
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A quiet variety of disaster--the type that attracts no cults and appears as a curiosity on a few talented folks' résumés for people to try to place in a year or so. Maybe less.

Full Review | Comment
04/16/08 07:54 PM
Walter Chaw
Film Freak Central
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Clooney tries to Flags of Our Fathers if directed by Preston Sturges.

Full Review | Comment
04/16/08 07:26 PM
Stephen Himes
Film Snobs
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A 1920s football saga that blends rusty screwball comedy and perfunctory romance under a period piece veneer.

Full Review | Comment
04/16/08 11:02 AM
Nick Schager
Lessons of Darkness
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In his third film as director, Clooney has taken us back to the films he enjoyed as a child, the classic romantic comedies of Preston Sturgess and Frank Capra.

Full Review | Comment
04/15/08 06:21 PM
Michael A. Smith
Nolan's Pop Culture Review
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Glib, sophisticated and silly.

Full Review | Comment
04/14/08 10:45 AM
Jeffrey Westhoff
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
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With its screwball comedy approach to how football changed from a no-holds-barred sport to one with strict rules, 'Leatherheads" is a nostalgic treat.

Full Review | Comment
04/12/08 02:52 PM
Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews
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Self-assured even when it's self-aware, this is a fizzy concoction with three fingers of Billy Wilder and one of Frank Capra. It's shaken with the Coens and topped off with a splash of Ron Shelton and a cinematographical cream-soda sheen.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 11:14 AM
Nick Rogers
State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)
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Probably only Clooney could expect to get away with a movie this bad...

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 10:33 AM
Jim Lane
Sacramento News & Review
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Despite being so false and slight, the movie entertains.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 10:02 AM
John Wirt
Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA)
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... The witty dialogue, delivered with verve and precise timing, especially by Clooney and Zellweger, is the the movie's greatest strength.

Full Review | Comment
04/11/08 05:56 AM
Greg Maki
Star-Democrat (Easton, MD)
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The movie stops dead in its tracks every time Renee Zellweger wanders into frame.

Full Review | Comment
04/10/08 08:38 AM
Ethan Alter
Giant Magazine
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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