Leatherheads

Leatherheads,studio publicists have said, is intended to be a kind of throwback to those movies of the '40s and '50s called "screwball comedies." And Rafer Guzmán in Newsday applauds George Clooney, who both stars in the football film and directs it, for imbuing it "with an irresistible charm and intelligence, raising it far above the average period piece." Likewise Claudia Puig in USA Today comments, "Though not as clever as the Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks movies to which it pays tribute, it succeeds at what it sets out to be: smart-alecky, lightweight fun." But A.O. Scott in the New York Times is one of the critics who maintains that the film falls far short of its goal. "The actors, writers and directors who made those old studio whirligigs spin," he writes, "made it look easy. By contrast Leatherheads, the third and by a wide margin the weakest movie directed by George Clooney, looks to have been nearly as hard to make as it is to watch." Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune begins his review with the words, "Tragically, Leatherheads is just OK." On the other hand Bob Strauss in the Los Angeles Daily News writes that Leatherheads "may not be as self-consciously arty as [Clooney's earlier] Good Night, and Good Luck or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It's not as good as those two, either, but it's a lot more fun than both of them combined." And Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle decides to punt. "Imagine a really nice, jolly, genial person with a mild, intermittent hygiene problem. This movie is a little like that," he writes. "It exudes goodwill and high spirits, occasionally makes you feel really good, and yet here and there and in some definite ways, it kinda sorta stinks."