Leatherheads (PG) **

12:43pm Friday 11th April 2008

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EVERYBODY loves George Clooney but public affection for the actor-writer-director-producer will be tested - although not too strenuously - by this uneven screwball comedy.

Leatherheads marks his third directorial outing, and is far lighter in tone than Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or Good Night, and Good Luck, recalling the old-fashioned studio pictures which paired Spencer Tracy with Katharine Hepburn, or Clark Gable with Joan Crawford.

Clooney and Renee Zellweger are the standard bearers in this 1920s-set battle of the sexes, and there's an undeniable appeal to the characters' flirtatious banter.

However, screenwriters Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly don't arm their love-struck protagonists with enough snappy one-liners to maintain a brisk tempo.

Dialogue certainly warrants an appreciative smile ("Everything runs in your family, Ralph, except your feet") but rarely do these cute verbal exchanges approach the crescendo of, say, His Girl Friday or It Happened One Night.

Crucially, the third point of the romantic triangle, a dashing poster boy played by John Krasinski, is a bit of a drip, who doesn't pose a realistic threat to Clooney's chances of sweeping the gal off her heels by the end credits.

With professional American football in the doldrums, veteran player Dodge Connelly (Clooney) realises the days of his team, the Duluth Bulldogs, are numbered.

So he seizes on a novel idea: to recruit star Princeton athlete Carter Rutherford (Krasinski) to the squad.

Carter is the golden boy of the college circuit, who regularly attracts crowds of 40,000 ardent fans, with a reputation as a war hero to boot. His attendance would guarantee record gate receipts for the Bulldogs.

Dodge manages to sweet talk Rutherford's hard-nosed manager CC Frazier (Jonathan Pryce), but is distracted by plucky reporter Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger), who has been despatched by her paper, The Chicago Tribune, to write a puff piece on the boy wonder.

In fact, she secretly intends to expose Carter's supposedly glittering war record as spin.

Carter signs on the dotted line and begins a record-breaking run with the Bulldogs.

Meanwhile, Dodge falls hopelessly in love with Lexie but grows increasingly jealous of the amount of time she spends with his fresh-faced new signing.

Leatherheads continues Clooney's fascination with celebrity culture and journalistic ethics, forcing Lexie to choose between her front page and the future of Krasinski's good guy.

The truth about Carter's time in the trenches pulls the film in one ponderous direction while the love-hate sparring of Clooney and Zellweger takes it somewhere else entirely.

The leading man turns the act of staring dreamily down the camera into an art form, seducing half the female audience with a beatific smile well before his co-star reciprocates his interest.

Pryce's boo-hiss money-grabber gets his come-uppance before a rain-sodden final showdown between the two men on the football field, which must have been huge fun to shoot but is a bit of a bore for us as spectators.

• See it at the Empire