Leatherheads (2008)

The football comedy "Leatherheads" is a throwback film to the vaudeville era when the exact turn of a phrase and a wide-eyed actor or double take could carry a film, without fart and masturbation jokes.

Directed by and starring George Clooney, with assist from Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski and Jonathan Pryce, the film certainly does entertain. It tells the story, how true I don't know, of the beginning of professional football in post-World War I America. At the time, only college football mattered, and a National or American Football League seemed as ludicrous then as a DVD or nanotechnology would.

Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, who has plans on turning the idea of pro football into reality on the shoulders of war hero and Harvard college student Carter Rutherford (Krasinski). Zellweger plays a Chicago newspaper reporter sent to pop the war hero's balloon; it appears he's not all he can be.

The film plays its comedy well, but there's far too much cutesy in-joke eye-winking getting in the way for the character banter to fully come alive. The vaudeville-era films I've seen were and are funny because they earned every laugh with a slight poke in the ribs. "Leatherheads" tackles the viewer for a laugh. Sometimes less is more. Still, it's enjoyable as a quick forgettable laugh. B-