In 1925, Dodge Connolly is a charming, brash football hero who is determined to guide his team from bar brawls to packed stadiums. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his ragtag ranks. The captain hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport finally capture the country's attention. Welcome to the team Carter Rutherford, America's favorite son. A golden-boy war hero who single-handedly forced multiple German soldiers to surrender in WWI, Carter has dashing good looks and unparalleled speed on the field. This new champ is almost too good to be true, and Lexie Littleton aims to prove that's the case. A cub journalist playing in the big leagues, Lexie is a spitfire newswoman who suspects there are holes in Carter's war story. But while she digs, the two teammates start to become serious off-field rivals for her fickle affections. As the new game of pro-football becomes less like the freewheeling sport he knew and loved, Dodge must both fight to keep his guys together and to get the girl of his dreams. Finding that love and football have a surprisingly similar playbook, however, he has one maneuver he will save just for the fourth quarter.

Sometimes you watch a movie and you cannot for the life of you figure out what it’s missing even though you are acutely aware it is missing something. Whether it be more drama, a little more action or even a little more comedy the movie just seems to be nagingly missing something. Would the movie be better if it was funnier, would it be better if there were more action sequences, would a little more drama help to liven up this bland and mediocre film. Whatever it is missing makes it just that bland and mediocre, the film never draws you in, never enthralls you, and never truly entertains you. This is the fate of Leatherheads, the movie for the most part is ok but it is also very bland as nothing never truly happens that you wouldn’t expect in just another overly clichéd sports flick that does nothing to stand out against a hundred movies just like it.

The problem probably boils down to ego, which is a funny thing to say about a movie. The screenwriters, director and actors all just seem to appear to be so full of themselves that we are supposed to be blown away by their witty dialogue and banter. We are supposed to forget the movie slightly boring as nothing really every happens because they have some witty banter in the film. We are supposed to forget that the story has been told thousands of times before and many times better on a number of occasions because the actors are just so cool and epitomize what it means to be a Hollywood star. All this fast talking, hip sounding dialogue is supposed to make up for a movie that is really not that funny, not that dramatic and lacking in action.

It all comes down to the films two stars Renee Zellweger and George Clooney. And they both fail miserably to carry the movie or make you that interested in the story. They are supposed to be hip, fast talking character with chemistry in between them that makes up for the lack of drama, comedy and action in the movie and sadly they fail to mask the movies inadequacies. I recently watched something that made fun of Renee and how she scrunches up her face to let you know it’s a dramatic moment and I could not get that image out of my head the entire film. Every time she scrunched her face to let me know this scene was supposed to be dramatic I wanted to laugh. It was too comical and sadly too true about her acting abilities as she utilizes it far too much in the course of a two hour film.

What the movie could have used was an injection of true events. Maybe they should have based the film on the true birth of pro football and real leatherheads. It might have helped, there might have been something interesting in the history of the sport that could make up for the fact that the movie never truly becomes interesting and this from a fan of the sport who would have like nothing more than to have loved the movie and who instead found himself bored by it.

Grade: C-