Universal Studios
www.leatherheadsmovie.com
The romantic comedy Leatherheads is like no other film you have seen. It’s a story that evolves around the emerging America pro-football league in 1925. For all the lads and lasses out there, this may sound like a footy film with men running back and forth on a pitch in shorts, but bare in mind, it is set in 1925 and actually focuses more on the building of the game rather than the actual playing of it and has some romance and hilarious qualities.
From start to finish this film has a unique sense of setting the scene. At the beginning you are immediately introduced to characters and follow them on their path. There is a flash back to show why Carter (Krasinski) is regarded as a war hero, and why you should never jump the facts, as things are not always the way they seem. The end credits show the future in image form, the music played is specifically sounding of that era, the font of the credits that looks like Cheers but much older, the transportation and costume including hair are all set to perceive the1920’s. Along with these elements, the attitudes of the lead characters all play a key role in the believability of the viewer. Journalist Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) with her lively and powerful statute was refreshing to see from a woman of this time, Carter with his golden-boy good looks seems the type to get away with anything he wants and Dodge (Clooney) with his full of yourself character and charming sarcasm.
Clooney has probably had the hardest of roles through Leatherheads as not only did he have to portray a liking to Johnny “Blood” McNally, who spent a year playing for the Duluth Eskimo’s; Duluth being the team focused upon in the film, but he had the director’s chair to fill. Playing Dodge, a footballer determined to direct his team away from bar brawls to crowded stadiums, there seemed no one better for the job, and as a director, he has an astonishing eye for creative elements. There is a lot of imagination and investigate gone into every aspect of the film to make a tale set even before many of us were twinkles in our parents eyes come to the big screen and be accepted in a wave of horror movies and commercial comedies.
For the ladies, the romance enters when two team players take the fight off the field by competing over Lexie’s affections. It was fairly unknown for a woman of this era to focus on her career options, but this Lexie’s focus within this flick. The flirting and the means of how each footballer wrestles (literally) for the consideration of the career woman that gives the film a warm inner glow.
Humour is always on the bill, but it is the ways it is approached that makes the film so enjoyable. From sly looks from Clooney, Krasinski having a few too many drinks and lots more funnies to tickle your tummies. Oscar winners Clooney and Zellweger have teamed up for a film about to blast your mind open.
Michelle Moore