Leatherheads (PG-13)

What I know about pro football circa 1925 you could fit on the back of the “Press” card stuck in the band of your snap-brim fedora. In other words, not much. But you don’t have to know much to go along for the pleasant ride that is “Leatherheads.”

George Clooney is “Dodge” Connelly, a dodgy character of an aging pro who just loves to play football even as a pro. You see, in 1925 pro-football was a joke to real fans, the press and, to some extent, the players. The teams were constantly running out of money and folding, the schedule was adjusted almost daily because the team you were supposed to play went out of business and you may not have had the money for railroad tickets to get to the next game anyway. College football was the thing and Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) was THE star of college football. And not just a football star, a hero of the recently concluded “Great War.”

Dodge finds a way to entice Rutherford’s agent C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) to agree to have Rutherford turn pro. That way, of course, is money. Dodge pretty much gives away the store to get the War Hero/Star into the pros but he sees that Rutherford can give his league instant credibility. There is one problem: Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger).

She’s the best writer on the Tribune and she’s out the find out what really happened in the Argonne Forest when Carter Rutherford became a war hero. Suffice it to say there is a story behind the story and the hero is not quite what he’s billed as, but there’s no real chicanery afoot. Lexie winds up being the center of the attentions of both Dodge and Carter.

This is the kind of movie where Carter and Dodge fight over the girl for quite a while and when they’re done neither man has a mark on him. But logic has little place here and you just stipulate to certain facts that may only sort of make sense. Like Lexie getting the chance to write this kind of sports story in Chicago of the 1920s. It’s far more likely that a woman, no matter how good a writer, would be spinning her wheels writing recipes or society pieces for the Trib, not revelatory stories about sports heroes.

There’s also the question of Renee Zellweger as Lexie. Never a conventionally pretty girl, Renee is 40 now and it’s tough for her to pass for the age of 31 that Lexie admits to. As an actress she always seems to be trying a little too hard to me. But that may just be my problem; it needn’t be yours.

Some terrific character actors back up the main cast and they do a great job of filling out the background. Peter Gerety does a nice turn as the man who becomes commissioner of the league and while it’s never stated that this is the early N-F-L, it’s obvious that the commissioner is going to start the enterprise down the road to being the No Fun League we know today.

There’s some snappy screwball comedy dialog and another jazz-age evoking score by Randy Newman who also gets a cameo as (what else?) the piano player in a speakeasy. At two hours it could have been a bit shorter although there are a couple of the deletes scenes on the dvd that I thought should have made the cut.

“Leatherheads” is certainly worth the rental and if you buy dvd’s or blue ray discs this would be a fun addition to your library.