LEATHERHEADS (2008)

[Update 07/21/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Where's the football? The tagline for the film is "In the beginning, the rules where simple. There weren't any." Now, maybe I'm just being overly imaginative, but in my mind that tagline plus the DVD cover above creates all kinds of exciting images of rugged, barbarian-type football players charging all over the football field grinding cleats into hands, ripping opponents faces off and crushing testicles. Or maybe a wacky, slapstick comedy with all kinds of silly, Buster Keaton/Harold Lloyd-style tomfoolery going on. But no, instead LEATHERHEADS is a romantic comedy about football...with only maybe 20 minutes of actual football onscreen. And boring football action at that. Hmm.

OK then, well that's disappointing, but let's go ahead and see if it's at least an enjoyable romantic comedy that's romantic and funny. No, it's not. LEATHERHEADS seems like it wants to go multiple directs all at the same time, but actually goes nowhere. It starts off with some football shenanigans about George Clooney playing in a financially collapsing football club, then it switches gears to prune-faced newspaper reporter Renee Zellweger trying to uncover the truth behind the war hero story of football star John Krasinski. These two stories come together when Clooney convinces Krasinski to join his near failure team and Zellweger follows the team on the road under the guise of doing a piece on Krasinski. On top of this is the inevitable love triangle when Clooney and Krasinski both fall for Renee's adorable, snarling puss. But if that's not enough things come to a screeching halt for probably 20 minutes or more when Renee publishes her damning article about Krasinski's war records. Who gives a fuck?!!! Where's the football?

My advise to time-travelers going back in time to rewrite this script: drop the entire war record angle and instead make it about a rugged, hard-living player who has dedicated his life to bringing up the game and right as it's happening, the powers that be starts to push him out to make room for younger, more brash players. You can leave the female reporter (played by Charlize Theron instead) and have her following the younger player, but while doing so she falls in love with the older player.

THE PERFECT STORM (2000)

A group of fishermen (each with a heart of gold so pure that the mere sweat off their manly brows could cure a blind, one-armed orphan with terminal butt cancer) go fishing out in the ocean. They catch some fish and when they turn around to go back...there's the biggest hurricane in the history of the Universe standing between them and the mainland. They were warned multiple times that this storm is fucking huge, but goddamn it, the ice machine has conked out and they gotta get these future fish sticks to market!  Stat!  Fifty foot waves be damned!!! You can probably guess what happens next...that's right, Marky Mark uses the Shining to communicate to his wife onshore. 

When it comes to pure Hollywoodized excessively sentimental unicornshit, it doesn't get much sappier than THE PERFECT STORM. From the very beginning of the movie, the musical score was swelling and each character introduced was even more faultless and contrived than the last one. By the 15-minute mark I actually started profusely lactating what appeared (and tasted) to be strawberry milk! True story. Speaking of true stories, this movie was based on a true story. I've done zero minutes of research, but I'm pretty goddamn sure that most of the bullshit in this movie was bullshit. Like when the fishing boat did a barrel roll and survived or the scene were the boat was damn near vertical and George Clooney was still standing. I doubt that happened in real life.

That said, this movie was a lot of fun to laugh at. Everybody had horrible New England accents, Marky Mark and George Clooney had dueling whiskers (I even hoped, I mean, thought they were going to kiss at one point), people risked their lives left and right to save others, nonstop swelling music, tons of crying, cliches on top of cliches, painful dialogue and the best part? The failed attempt to make the audience give a fuck about the crew of the boat. I loved how each one was portrayed to be so pure of heart and saintly that they made Norman Borlaug look like fucking Hitler, but yet they were still selfish enough to go fishing after being warned repeatedly not to do so and then, even after looking at the weather bulletin, they vote to drive through the storm! That aspect right there removes any emotional connection that I might have actually had to the characters...no matter how immaculate they each were.  I guess God just wanted his angels back in Heaven.

Check it out with some friends and laugh.

True story (from my imagination): In the original cut of the movie, in the scene were George Clooney ghost rides the boat whip up the tidal wave halfpipe, somebody screams "Fuuuccck!  It's the perfect storm, bitchez!!!"

If Jesus had been on the Titanic it would have looked like this.