Leatherheads : Movie Review


There's a rule in Hollywood: spring is for baseball films; fall is for football films. It's a time-honored tradition that makes sense when one considers the seasonal popularity of the sports, but Leatherheads flouts it. This is a football-themed film entering multiplexes during baseball's opening week. (The only ones interested in football now are the draftniks.) It's easy enough to justify when one considers that the football aspects of Leatherheads are largely cosmetic. It's not a sports movie per se (although it does climax with a "big game moment"). First and foremost, this is a throwback screwball comedy with '40s sensibilities (despite being set in the '20s). Still, there's enough on-field action that one has to wonder if the executives at Universal were aware that this is not the optimum time of the year to release this. Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to… the origins of the NFL? I wonder what John Fogerty would think of that.

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