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Everybody loves George Clooney, but public affection for the actor-writer- director-producer will be tested - though not too strenuously - by this uneven screwball comedy.

Leatherheads marks his third directorial outing, and is far lighter in tone than Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind or Good Night, And Good Luck, recalling the old-fashioned studio pictures which paired Spencer Tracy with Katharine Hepburn, or Clark Gable with Joan Crawford.

Clooney and Renee Zellweger star in this 1920s-set battle of the sexes, and there's an undeniable appeal to the characters' flirtatious banter. However, screenwriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly don't give the main players enough snappy one-liners.

Rarely do these cute verbal exchanges approach the crescendo of, say, His Girl Friday or It Happened One Night. Crucially, the third point of the romantic triangle, a dashing poster boy played by John Krasinski, is a bit of a drip, who doesn't pose a realistic threat to Clooney's chances of sweeping the gal off her heels by the end credits.

With professional American football in the doldrums, veteran player Dodge Connelly (Clooney) realises the days of his team, the Duluth Bulldogs, are numbered. So he seizes upon a novel idea: to recruit star Princeton athlete Carter Rutherford (Krasinski) to the squad.

Carter is the golden boy of the college circuit, who regularly attracts crowds of 40,000 ardent fans, with a reputation as a war hero to boot.

His attendance would guarantee record gate receipts for the Bulldogs.

Dodge manages to sweet talk Rutherford's hard-nosed manager, CC Frazier (Pryce), but is distracted by plucky reporter Lexie Littleton (Zellweger), who has been despatched by her paper, The Chicago Tribune, to write a puff piece on the boy wonder.

In fact, she secretly intends to expose Carter's supposedly glittering war record as spin.

Leatherheads continues Clooney's fascination with celebrity culture and journalistic ethics, forcing Lexie to choose between her front page and the good guy.

The truth about Carter's time in the trenches pulls the film in one ponderous direction while the love-hate sparring of Clooney and Zellweger takes it somewhere else entirely.

The leading man turns the act of staring dreamily down the camera into an art form, seducing half the female audience with a beatific smile.

There's a rain-sodden showdown between on the football field, which must have been huge fun to shoot but is a bit of a bore for us as spectators.

12:13pm Friday 11th April 2008

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