On DVD: Leatherheads

The most interesting material on the new DVD release of George Clooney's period comedy Leatherheads isn't the movie -- it's the far-too-short extra features. In the "making of" featurette, Clooney explains that there weren't 1920s period costumes available for the film's extras because "we're a foot taller than we were in 1925, and we weigh 60 pounds more." Posters, newspapers and billboards were crafted from scratch, locations had to be cheated with digital effects, and entire facades built for stadium scenes. The work that went on behind the scenes on Leatherheads is fascinating, and worthy of more than the six minutes that's devoted to the subject.

On the other hand, there's the movie itself. Clooney's directorial follow-up to Good Night and Good Luck is a pleasantly entertaining screwball comedy, but a pretty forgettable one. It's the sort of film that looks like it was a lot of fun for the cast -- which includes Clooney, John Krasinski, and Renée Zellweger -- but somehow lacks the sort of zing that would elevate it from not-bad to really good.

Which is a shame, because it's a fascinating period of sports history. In 1925, college football was hugely popular, but no one cared at all about professional football, which was seen more as a traveling carnival show. Teetering on the brink of failure, Dodge Connelly (Clooney), owner of the Duluth Bulldogs, recruits famed college player Carter Rutherford (Krasinski) for his team. A handsome, charismatic All-American (the character is based on Red Grange), Rutherford's addition to the squad fills the stands, and garners media attention for the Bulldogs. A Chicago Tribune reporter named Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) is sent to dig up some dirt on the football star, a war hero whose legend includes single-handedly taking out an entire company of German soldiers. What ensues is classic love triangle/will-the-hero's-secret-be-revealed stuff, embellished with the sort of scattershot banter that films of the genre require.

It's a premise with great potential, yet it never really delivers on its promise. Clooney may have simply had ambitions that were impossible to achieve, aiming for a whip-smart screwball yarn in the Preston Sturges/Howard Hawks mold and making a few tactical errors along the way. For starters, the script (credited to Sports Illustrated writers Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, but tweaked by Clooney, as well) just doesn't sparkle. The dialogue is crisp and fast-paced, but never offers the sort of surprises that mark really good screwball comedies. Just having the characters talk fast isn't enough -- they have to land verbal punches that startle the viewer into laughter, and that never happens here.

Then there's the miscasting of Zellweger in the Rosalind Russell/Katherine Hepburn/Myrna Loy role. Barely able to spit out her lines at the pace required, Zellweger narrows her tiny, mean eyes even further than usual and purses her lips, and appears in every scene to be utterly out of her depth. Strapped into high heels and tottering about on her Pixie Stix legs, bright red lipstick artfully applied well outside the limits of her mouth, she looks like a little girl whose mother dressed her up as His Girl Friday for Halloween. She also seems really hungry.

Clooney and Krasinski, on the other hand, are physically ideal for their roles, and they play them with charm and commitment. So much so, that it's a disappointment when one realizes how lacking the film is as a whole. Clooney's riffing on his Clark Gable-like performance in O Brother, Where Art Thou? here, and it suits him. But without the cleverness of a Coen Brothers script, it's like delicious icing on a flavorless cake. To his credit, Clooney sticks to classic camera set-ups to emulate period films, and the magic behind the scenes, both digital and physical, is seamless. But Clooney seems to have forgotten the most important tenet of filmmaking -- you have to have a good script first. Without that, Leatherheads is just a great-looking, modestly amusing picture that you'll forget about a half hour after you've watched it.

Universal Home Video offers up an excellent transfer of the film wide-screen anamorphic transfer preserving its 1.85:1 aspect ratio. (It's also available on Blu-ray.) As mentioned previously, it's a great-looking film -- muted tones to give the feeling of a period film, a lot of nice warm colors -- and it's well represented here. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (English, French or Spanish, with subtitles in those languages) is good, with nice ambient sound and excellent use of surround for effect in the big stadium scenes.

Extras kick off with a commentary track with Clooney and producer Grant Heslov, which is amiable and occasionally funny, and very specific to the scenes on screen. There are also nine deleted scenes, none of which are especially notable, the six-minute featurette mentioned at the top of the review, titled "Football's Beginning: The Making of Leatherheads," and the slightly longer "No Pads, No Fear: Creating the Rowdy Football Scenes," which is precisely what it says. There's also a piece on the visual effects sequences, and a short, amusing look at a prank Clooney played on some of his actors.

Dawn Taylor will forgive George Clooney anything.

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