Review of Leatherheads (2008) by Chads. — 08 Apr 2008

Never mind Rosalind Russell in Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday", there's Jennifer Jason Leigh's canny tribute to the motormouthed Russell in Joel & Ethan Coen's underrated "The Hudsucker Proxy" to contend with, and Renee Zellweger simply doesn't measure up.

To be fair, not even Leigh, with all that screwball sorcery she conjured as a newspaper woman("I'll stake my Pulitzer on it!") in the 1994 film starring Tim Robbins and Paul Newman, could spin gold out of this canned script.

Especially when Zelwegger is opposite the filmmaker, whose direction to his leading lady and to himself should've been, "Faster banter, kill! kill!" because the laughs are nearly nil. Journalistic integrity(or careerism) is the crux of "Leatherheads", in which Lexie Littleton(Zellweger) has to choose between the truth about a football hero's alleged derring-do for the war effort, and perpetuating the myth as the newspaper man did in John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

") Hmmm. Jessica Lynch, anybody? Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, if you recall, had in his possession, nude photos of the Iraqi war hero. If you go by the film's logic, that the public has a right to know, then by all means, the pornographer should expose the exposed.

Muckracking, or proto-tabloid journalism, that's what "Leatherheads" frames its attempt at screwball comedy around.