Leatherheads: B-

I like George Clooney. The ever-present smirk (that never comes across like he bought it in the same place W. bought his); the salt-and-pepper hair he's had since he was twenty; the affability of his countenance - all of it. Physically, Mr. Clooney is a wonder. Oh, and career-wise he is too...I guess. I mean, on one hand you've got Michael Clayton and the Ocean's films to his credit as a visceral hero, too cool or moral to come out on bottom. But then on your other hand you've got Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck that are, while not bad movies, a little like high-value cough syrup: they both taste awful, no matter the sky-high nutritional value after the fact. As an actor, I'll assume he's given more to the first two films than the second pair, reports to the contrary. Yet as a director, his sensibilities (excluding Confession of a Dangerous Mind, but I'll chalk that up to whiz-kind writer Charlie Kaufman) have always been toward the staunchly nostalgic and politically active fare. So what is the end result for Leatherheads, a too-long comedy about the "When I was a kid..." days of pro-football? It mixes Fun, Relatable Actor Clooney with Pining, Retrospective Director Clooney, and not always in equal measure. Well, I somewhat happily report, the film works just enough to be an entertainment, if still not enough to be occasionally not a bore.

There is yet another trend in the work of George Clooney that applies here; and that is the apparent regression in his work time-wise. Consider: Confessions was a 70s period-thriller, while Good Night was a 50s newsroom drama, and now Leatherheads: a 20s-set screwball-romance-action-drama-comedy about how Rules ruined the Game. I wonder what his next film will be? A bio-pic of Woodrow Wilson, with Ben Kingsley or Anthony Stewart Head appropriately squinty as the man himself, and a script by Aaron Sorkin? Regardless of the actual time period of the film, the Clooney Twinkle still shines through to a modern audience for the majority of the movie, his comedic mugging (which is nothing like the quicksilver timing he used in Ocean's Eleven, mind you) in full genial effect. And the plot itself - all about Dodge Connelly's (George Clooney) fading Duluth Bulldogs, and how they recruit star college player Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) who is being chased by a cynical reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger ) - can rumble and ramble for scenes on end quite agreeably. And then the plot has to go somewhere, and stuff starts shifting unagreeably. One has only Clooney's perceived ill-skill with the rhythms of comedy to blame for the crankily-shifting gears of his picture.

Take, for example, Leatherheads' most prominent feature in a cinematic landscape now frequently home to the Summer Blockbuster: rat-a-tat, his-and-hers dialogue. Take, for an example of this example, the brief exchange:

Lexie: I'll live-
Dodge: Alone!

Now imagine their split-second verbal baton passes are accompanied by a (mostly pleasing and) cheeky score of Randy Newman's composing, and that Clooney's camera practically zings! between his stars and you have the atmosphere of Heads...when it works. When it doesn't, I'm afraid very little of writers Duncan Brantley & Rick Reilly's dialogue is screwball so much as it is obvious, annoying, and loud. Add in a pinch of needless romantic intrigue - i.e. Lexie has to cozy up to Carter to find the truth beneath his "too-perfect" war record, while she's simultaneously falling for Dodge - and a final football game that's like a mixture of the climax of Any Given Sunday and the water-wheel scene from Dead Man's Chest (that is, endless, and barely engaging/entertaining), and you've got the movie, pretty much in full.

Do I begrudge George Clooney for continuing to take on projects most of his contemporary hyphenated Hollywood stars would shy away from? I'll admit, it's difficult, especially as he keeps making them function in some partiality on screen. But the more I consider Leatherheads, whose structure and comedy are saved only by the grace of its stars, the more the sinking notion begins to dawn on me: perhaps the Clooney Twinkle is fading a little, dilipidated as it is from being trotted out so much to shows like these. Accordingly, a plea: stop screwing around, Mr. Director/Star-of-the-Universe, and get back to the roles that make us love you so; you, know: the ones where you're either drop-dead cool or drop-dead dramatic. Not stuff like this, where your talents and pretty mug are hermetically-sealed in a two-hour time-capsule of naeive nostalgia and hit-or-miss laughs.