"Fumble" doesn't quite describe George Clooney's "Leatherheads," the actor-director's Prohibition-era sports comedy. It's good-natured. Droll. Buoyant. Fast-paced. Electric. Okay, not quite, not really. But it is a romp, one that might have been called "When Football Was Rugby." Or "The Rules of the Game." Already been done? Well, so has most of "Leatherheads."

Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, a World War I vet and pioneer in the doomed sport of professional football. No one in 1925 thinks the enterprise will last, until Dodge has a brainstorm: Lure war hero-turned-Princeton-gridiron star Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski of TV's "The Office") away from law school to help spearhead pro football's drive into the American imagination. Rah! What no one knows, except her editor, is that ace reporter Lexie Littleton (Rene Zellweger) has been assigned to get the goods on Carter, whose exploits in the trenches may not have been as glorious as the nation has been led to believe.

As one might expect from Clooney, who reportedly rewrote the Duncan Brantley-Rick Reilly script, there are subtexts, chief among them the imposition of rules that turned the free-for-all that was football into the game we have today. There's also a rather self-deprecating potshot at celebrity. These matters aren't heavy-handed. They're far more subtle than, say, Zellweger, who either has a lemon slice stuck to the roof of her mouth or is, as TV's "Family Guy" once portrayed her, an anteater.

There's a flatness about the whole enterprise -- like drinking champagne, but from an old house slipper. This misfiring begins with the casting of Zellweger but is seen, too, in the way Clooney frames his picture. There's a claustrophobia in "Leatherheads."

Re: his performance, Clooney is terrific. His comparison to old movie stars is not just hype. He really does possess the combination of supreme confidence and humility that has been the hallmark of the biggest male Hollywood stars. And he can act. When Dodge Connelly first spots Lexie Littleton in their hotel lobby, the camera follows as Dodge keeps moving, never lifting his eyes from her, and Clooney gives us the unmistakable look of a man who knows he's stepping off a precipice. He's fascinated, infatuated and self-aware but surrendering nonetheless. It's a lovely moment.

-- John Anderson (April 4, 2008)

Contains vulgar language.