Leathery Goodness

George Clooney steps behind the camera for the fourth time in Leatherheads, a screwball comedy in which Clooney also stars. The plot revolves around the early days of professional and college football, loosely based on actual events. After working with the Coen Brothers on at least three of their films, its easy to see where Clooney picked up some of his directing skill. Leatherheads is almost as good as Burn After Reading in terms of laughs, sharp dialogue and a tangled plot.

Set in the mid-1920's, when college football was incredibly popular and professional football was still "underground" (and muddy), Leatherheads is the story of Dodge Connelly (Clooney) and Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski a.k.a Jim from the Office) who try to make football a legitimate sport and win the heart of Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) in the process.

Does it sound like you've heard this story before? Yet even when Clooney is serving up something cliché, he adds a personal, Coen-esque twist to it. Even tackling on the plot of (yet another?) football film, Clooney takes us into the world of prohibition, down-and-dirty sports and nasty politics. The attention to detail, including the leather helmets the players wear (from which the movie gets its title), add more life than your average football/inspirational blah like We Are Marshall or Remember the Titans.

Sure, the Duluth Bulldogs are an underdog team (no pun intended) up against an insurmountable football team, and sure, they win in the end, but the movie is so wrapped up in story that by the ending, you really don't care about the grand finalé, you care about the people. That's more important.

Considering the intended audience for this film would be hipsters or mature members of the Facebook generation, the vein of this movie's message, in all likelyhood, could be that once football was rough, surprising and actually interesting, unlike today. This decade's breed of teenager cares less and less about sports (unless you count the XBOX 360 versions) and more about Guitar Hero and Zelda. Games where participation is often more rewarding. Watching football is overly formulated and predictable to the average member of the 21st century. In fact, most people watch the Super Bowl just because of the commercials.

Perhaps the main point of this movie is that the government decided to govern the rules of football, which instantly made it boring. Leatherheads is almost promoting a view that says "keep government out of professional sports" because 90 years ago, they dehumanized it. The government added a shitload of rules making it nearly impossible to score, making every play the same and lulling audiences to sleep. If only, Leatherheads suggests, football was the same, we'd have more of a human element in one of our national pastimes.