This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Leatherheads is a comedy about professional football in the 30's. It's one of those movies that has a good cast and some good moments, and yet it's a movie everyone's seen before. George Clooney stars as Dodge Connelly, a man who runs a football team that is slowly going downhill. John Krasinski is very good as Carter Rutherford, a big time football player who agrees to join their team to make it better. Renee Zellweger plays Lexie Littleton, a news reporter whose love Carter and Dodge are fighting for. This becomes a romantic comedy. It had its funny and romantic moments, it wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't good. It's a movie that's enjoyable, but in most of its moments, even the better moments, it feels forced, it feels like it's trying too hard. Nothing about it seems authentic. It has its occasional good moments, and the style is pretty good. That said, it all feels amateur, and I can't quite say it's a good movie. It's not a bad one, just one I'm not able to recommend. If you happen to run into it on TV, it's probably worth watching, just don't pay to see it, because it's simply not worth it.

In the 1920s, even though college football was regularly playing to sellout crowds, the professional side of the sport was as anathema to most Americans as Hulk Hogan being feted as guest-of-honor at the Queen's high tea.Poorly regulated and sparsely attended, these early pro games were true spit-and-bailing-wire affairs, the players little more than a ragtag collection of "miners and farmers and shell-shocked veterans of the Great War," the equipment well-worn or nonexistent, and as for venues - well, pretty much any turnip field that didn't have too much of a slant or too many holes in the ground would suffice in a pinch. It was about as far from the multimillion dollar contracts and corporate sponsorships of today's NFL as one could possibly imagine.It's nice to be reminded of football's humble beginnings every now and then, and "Leatherheads," at least in theory, is just the movie to do it.Based very loosely on fact, the screenplay tells the story of Jimmy "Dodge" Connelly (George Clooney, who also co-wrote and directed the film), a pro ball player who comes up with a scheme to save the league from extinction by recruiting the top player from Princeton, a charismatic war hero named Carter "the Bullet" Rutherford ("The Office"'s John Kransinski) to play for the Duluth Bulldogs. This brings the fans to the arenas in record numbers, and pro football seems well on its way to a bright and lucrative future. Enter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), an acerbic ace reporter for the Chicago Tribune whose editors have sent her on assignment to investigate whether Rutherford's status as a war hero is really all it's trumped up to be or whether it's just a carefully manufactured fiction designed to boost his popularity with the fans - an expose that, if printed, could well spell doom not only for the young man himself but for the sport whose new-won fame is intricately linked to the prestige he alone confers upon it.Done in the style of a 1930s screwball comedy, "Leatherheads" is filled with sharp-tongued characters who basically spoon and spar their way to a happy ending. But while the movie certainly looks sensational and boasts tremendous star power in the likes of Clooney, Zellweger and Kransinski, the triteness of the storyline and the cutesiness of the humor rob it of much of its sophistication and charm (an attempt at a Keystone Kops parody is a particularly dopey and ill-conceived stab at period detail relevance). Unfortunately, the farther the story drifts from the field and the history of football itself, the less compelling the movie becomes. Thus, "Leatherheads," with all its side forays into romantic schmaltz, corny newsroom melodrama and lowbrow slapstick, squanders its opportunity to be the first mainstream movie to truly explore the infancy of the game. A pity.On the other hand, the movie does contain some of the best art direction, costume design and cinematography of any movie in recent memory. And that alone might make it worth checking out.

Like a lot of people, I never bothered with this film when it came out in the cinemas because of the negative reviews that it got. Likewsie when it came to DVD it sat at the bottom end of my rental list waiting for me to want to watch it. Eventually I did and initially I thought that the reviews had been unfairly harsh because the film seemed like it was going to be a light and sparky sports period piece that captures the screwball comedies of years gone by. This is how it starts but unfortunately it is not how it continues. It is not like, at some point the film suddenly gets "bad" (it doesn't) but more that it doesn't quite have the sparkle or life that the trimmings all suggest that it will.In terms of capturing the period, it does a great job – or at least it does a great job of continuing the nostalgic idea of the period. It does this with a cool jazz soundtrack, good costumes and the suggestion of the snappy dialogue that the screwball movies are known for. I say suggestion because of the places where the film doesn't have the zing that it needed is in the script. It does have its moments though and it is quite fun at times but mostly it feels like it is just falling short of where it should be. It has a couple of things that don't help this either. Firstly it is too long, maybe not for the plot (it doesn't "drag" per se) but certainly for the light tone. Secondly, the romance aspect of the plot doesn't really work, which is partly down to the casting of Zellweger.Where Clooney fits the bill as a "too-cute by half" square-jawed matinée star, Zellweger cannot convincingly deliver her lines in a way that works. I think of Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker Proxy – she did an impression of an actress in a screwball comedy that was pretty good and looking at that shows up how ill-suited Zellweger is. I know people dislike her on principle but I am not one of them, I just thought she was pretty poor here. Krasinski is good in his role even if, to be frank, he didn't do anything that suggested he has more than the range of characterisation that he has already shown on The Office – and that should be of concern to his "people" since he will soon need to breakout of that show as it cannot run forever. The supporting cast has plenty of interesting and recognisable faces who do solid work.Leatherheads is not a terrible comedy as some have suggested and it should not be criticised for being inconsequential or light. Sadly though it is not frothy, sparky or fun enough to be the film that it was clearly intended to be. OK there are specific issues with aspects of the plot and some (well, one) bit of casting but generally this bigger picture problem is what limits it to be an "OK" film but no better than that.

Poor material makes even the decent chemistry between George Clooney and Renee Zellwegger really nothing.The story is about 1925 college football, or is it beyond college? That point is really not established and at times becomes confusing.While you do get a feel for the roaring twenties period, the writing is ridiculous as Renee Zellwegger, a reporter, tries to get the goods on a football hero who is also a war hero.Some of the scenes, especially running away from a speak-easy raid and jumping off a building into a net are ridiculous. The picture is nothing more than a cheap ripoff of a bygone era filled with clichés which eventually run themselves into the ground.