Clooney cracks code

Leatherheads (PG) 4 stars National release FOR Leatherheads, his third film as director, George Clooney, never one to play it safe, has taken some risks.

Renee Zellweger and George Clooney deliver in Leatherheads

Leatherheads (PG) 4 stars National release FOR Leatherheads, his third film as director, George Clooney, never one to play it safe, has taken some risks.

In defiance of the trend to pitch romantic comedies at young audiences, resulting in dismal efforts such as Made of Honor and What Happens in Vegas, he has dared to re-create the style and substance of Hollywood romantic comedy films of the 1930s: the screwball comedies.

The good news is that he and his screenwriters, Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, have been very successful in delivering the witty dialogue and smart plotting of an era of screen comedy many consider to represent the peak of the art.

Clooney has also taken a risk with his subject matter, professional football, in defiance of the fact that few sports movies are successful and films about specifically US sports even less so because they rarely attract overseas audiences.

Like many fine films, Leatherheads is about a time of change, when football was transformed from an essentially amateur pastime into big business. The film takes us back to 1925, when professional football was, apparently, a struggling and rather despised activity; college football teams were more popular and better supported. Clooney plays Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly, the leading player for the Duluth Bulldogs, a team struggling along at the bottom of the ladder and only just managing to keep its sponsor, Dunn's Perennial Starch ("Best in the World!"). As Mrs Dunn mutters to her husband after the latest debacle, "There must be better ways to promote the starch business."

Until now, it seems, the players have done pretty much anything they wanted on the field but, as Dodge notes ruefully, "A new and dangerous element is creeping in: rules." If the Bulldogs are to survive, they've got to smarten themselves up, and the ever-resourceful Dodge gets the idea of hiring top college player and World War I hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), despite the reservations of Carter's devious manager, C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce).

As in the best comedies of this sort, at its core Leatherheads is about a three-way romance. The woman in the case is Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), a smartly dressed, tough-as-nails journalist who is assigned by her boss, newspaper editor Harvey (Jack Thompson, giving an amusingly ripe performance), to write a piece about Carter, whose status as a hero -- he is supposed to have captured a German unit single-handed -- has been called into question.

Lexie is the kind of supremely self-confident woman beloved by director Howard Hawks: think Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, for example. Sparks fly between Lexie and Dodge the moment they meet, while the younger and potentially more exciting Carter is also smitten with the newshen, as female journalists used to be called in movies.

And so the stage is set for some enjoyable exchanges (Dodge: "I didn't come here to be insulted." Lexie: "No? Where do you usually go?") and the sexual chemistry is palpable, thanks to Zellweger's feisty performance.

Like the great comedy actors of the past -- Russell, Myrna Loy, Jean Arthur and all the rest -- Zellweger combines sexiness and a sense of fun with a hard-boiled and elegant exterior. Clooney has often seemed to be emulating Clark Gable, and so he does here, but there's more than a touch of Cary Grant thrown in, and that's praise indeed. As a bonus, all the supporting players are expertly cast.

Leatherheads, which opens with the logo that Universal used back in the 1940s instead of the present one, is so successful at reviving the screwball comedy that you're prepared to forgive it some flaws. It's too long, for one thing, and the final football match is handled confusingly. But despite these minor drawbacks, this is as much fun as we've had in the cinema in quite a while.