The year is 1925 before football was taken seriously. The goofball team clearly never heard of rules and apparently never heard of Tom Brady either. Instead this makeshift gang is comprised of locals, neighbors, farmers and miners….and run by Dodge Connelly (George Clooney) perfectly cast with the looks of a yesteryear movie star. When the team is about to fold kaput, Dodge learns of a college star at Princeton named Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) and offers him a deal to drop out of school and play for his team. Enter trying-to-get-a-scoop-reporter, Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger) who’s so non-contemporary looking an actress that I can’t think of anybody who could have been better cast. Zellweger’s chemistry with Clooney is a bunch of flirtatious one-liners and on occasion you might think you’re watching Carrie and “Big” if “Sex and the City” were a century earlier. But alas, while this well-shot movie has old-timer charm, I’m not sure any audience member really cares about the beginning of football especially since the only character who genuinely cares is Dodge. The rest are in it for the money, and untrue to its time, if there were a football hero like Carter, Lexie the reporter wouldn’t be chasing down an expose. Not in those days. The script – though at times laugh-out-loud funny – feels overwritten and at the same time underwritten. Like when you beat the whipped crème too long or too short and can’t form the peaks. And finally, the irony is that while the movie is about football, there isn’t much football in it. Real life George Clooney is a bit of a prankster and a goofball himself and that’s where the film shines. He’s fun to watch and his desire to translate this to screen – in both his character and his directing – look fabulous. 2.5 tiaras
