BARELY A FUMBLE IN 'LEATHERHEADS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss

Film Critic

The period football comedy "Leatherheads," George Clooney's third and most accessible directing job, may not be as self-consciously arty as "Good Night, and Good Luck" or "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." It's not as good as those two, either, but it's a lot more fun than both of them combined.

Clooney is too smart and conscientious a filmmaker to fumble the ball or just go for straight entertainment. "Leatherheads" has a lot more than sports shenanigans and broad laughs on its mind.

It's richer than the "Ocean's" movies he stars in for Oscar-winning pal Steven Soderbergh, and not nearly as cartoonish as "Intolerable Cruelty," the cynical comedy he made for the recently awarded Coen brothers.

It's also arguably Clooney's most ambitious film. It's certainly his biggest.

Set in 1925, when college football was all the rage but the professional league was a rinky-dink operation considered unfit for grown men, "Leatherheads" does deliver raucous sports shenanigans and tasty period flavor. Plus, it's an OK romantic comedy and a sly commentary on everything from commercialization to military heroism.

For the first time in his directing career, Clooney also plays the key role.

That's Dodge Connolly, the aging but still game captain of the Duluth Bulldogs. A carouser and a cheat but truly in love with the game, he's unfit for any other employment when, like many other pro teams, the 'Dogs go broke. Then he gets the bright idea of luring Princeton superstar Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) -- who's not only the best player in the country but delayed his college career to fight in World War I and single-handedly capture a bunch of Germans -- into the game.

This works for a while. Attendance skyrockets, but with the new bucks come more rules and regulations -- anathema to old operators like Dodge. It also brings a snide, snooping reporter from Chicago, Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), out to prove a tip that Carter may not have been as brave in the trenches as legend has it. Triangular tension ensues, not always believably but sometimes hilariously.

Taken from a long-in-development script by Sports Illustrated writers Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, "Leatherheads" has its lapses in logic. Some of the snappy dialogue sounds phony, too, and Zellweger seems to have the toughest time saying it, but she also nails some banter runs beautifully, like Rosalind Russell or Lauren Bacall might have in a Howard Hawks movie.

Clooney pays tribute to the classic American director throughout "Leatherheads" as well as that other master of the screwball comedy, Preston Sturges. Wisely, however, Clooney doesn't try to exactly replicate the wackiness and pacing of the 1930s and '40s. Artificial as "Leatherheads" sometimes gets, it's grounded in modern screen naturalism. As in all of Clooney's directing efforts, there's also an ethical seriousness at its core.

And there's a lot of mud. But don't let that throw you, ladies; George still cleans up real nice.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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LEATHERHEADS - Three stars

>PG-13: violence, language.

>Starring: George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce.

>Director: George Clooney.

>Running time: 1 hr. 54 min.

>Playing: Area wide.

>In a nutshell: The mess that was 1920s pro football gets a fun, breezy, old Hollywood but not creaky treatment.

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Photo:

George Clooney, left, John Krasinski and Renee Zellweger star in "Leatherheads," a screwball comedy that pays tribute to classic American directors Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges.