I'm not entirely sure what George Clooney was aiming for with his new comedy, Leatherheads. I thought I knew, I know he's a good enough director to accomplish it, but the end result is so uninspiring and uneven that the only conclusion I can draw is that he changed his mind about the kind of movie it was halfway through.

Leatherheads should be a knowing sports comedy, one that points out the sort of athlete who would play in city after city never knowing when the next paycheck would come or who would bail them out for public drunk in some far off town. It's a comedy about guys crazy enough to play football without faceguards, the way they did it 80 years ago.

Clooney casts himself as over-the-hill player Dodge Connelly. Not his best invention, but you warm to the guy. Connelly schemes to salvage his team and put pro football on the map by paying the country's most beloved college player (John Krasinski) to siphon some of the 40,000 regular attendees of his games to the professional ranks. That's right; college football was king until about the 1940s.

And there's a spunky reporter (Renee Zellweger) trying to uncover the dirt on the heralded collegian's even more heralded war record.

It doesn't take long for Leathernecks to get sidetracked, but it's amiable enough for a while to keep you thinking that Clooney will figure things out by the third act. He doesn't. The third act is a real mess, a strange pairing of corporate drama and romantic flush that has no snap, no jokes, and no sense to it.

Zellweger is struggling to remain the actress she once was. She can't dominate a screen anymore the way she used to, the way very few diminutive actors could, and I hate to say it, but I think it's an age issue. Not that Zellweger is old, mind you, but that she's constantly playing old. She misses the mark by a good quarter-mile here.

John Krasinki is great as prankster Jim Halpert on The Office, and so far, he's not even remotely good at anything else.

And though Clooney gets his own performance about 70 - 80% right, and the look of the film is impressive, Leatherheads is so discombobulated that any praise you give him has to be overtaken by the ultimate criticism that this is his movie. And he could make anything he wants anyway he wants to.

And he has this to show for it.

Leatherheads

Starring George Clooney, Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski

Directed by George Clooney

Rated PG-13

Review by Colin Boyd

April 4, 2008