"Leatherheads": You can't score a touchdown on chemistry alone

You can't accuse George Clooney of being stuck in a rut. After a run of strong dramas — starring in "Michael Clayton," directing "Good Night, and Good Luck," executive producing and acting in "Syriana" — this generation's Cary Grant decided to direct and star in a screwball romantic comedy, set in the 1920s. And, perhaps inevitably, the new movie leaves you wondering, "Is this all there is?" "Leatherheads" gets by, just barely, on pure charm; it fades away almost instantly, leaving only a vague memory of cloche hats and soft yellow light.

Taking place in 1925, when college football was a much bigger deal than the low-rent pro football league (we see, in one of the movie's better jokes, pros scrimmaging on a field with a placid cow looking on), "Leatherheads" is essentially a romantic triangle encased in a sports comedy.

Clooney is Dodge Connelly, an aging pro who convinces college star Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to join his team. Rutherford is a war hero, or so he says — even as girl reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) tries to scoop the truth out of him for an exposé in her newspaper. Dodge falls for pert Lexie, Lexie starts making goo-goo eyes at Carter and everything gets very silly, as screwball comedies are supposed to do.

The problem is that "Leatherheads" is never quite silly enough; for most of the time it's cute, rather than genuinely funny. Clooney's obviously given the period some study, and the actors' bouncy rhythms feel natural and right, but Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly's screenplay is overlong and often flat, particularly in the final half-hour. In a late sequence involving a very muddy football game, the movie loses all momentum and visual interest — everything's dirt-brown — and just feels as if it should have ended already.

What saves the movie, though, is something very old-fashioned indeed: movie-star charisma. Clooney the director knows just how to catch Clooney the actor tossing off a line as if he's flicking away a cigarette, or gazing at Zellweger for a just-long-enough pause and a slow grin before he says, "C'mon. Let's dance." The two actors have genuine chemistry, and when they banter in a train sleeper compartment (he's snuck into her room and is hiding in the upper berth, in a very screwball turn of events), you get a sense of just how much fun this movie might have been.

"Leatherheads" is no disaster, but it leaves you wanting both less and more.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com