Leatherheads ***

Coach/director/producer George Clooney's "Leatherheads," a romantic comedy set in the roaring 'twenties in the rough world of professional football before it was tamed by rules, has some fun taking on a few icons of American culture and history on its way to unite the guy and the gal. The playbook is not original - get a new sponsor, hire a superstar - and the plays sometimes take too long to make their point, but the movie does manage to score with some snappy dialog and clever business before fumbling badly in the final minutes.

Set in 1925, the film evokes rather than chronicles the domestication of professional football. It was a time when college football had all the glory, yes, but what became the NFL was founded in 1920 as a league of mostly Midwestern teams whose players would otherwise be farming or working in the mines, and whose first president was the legendary Jim Thorpe. Perhaps writers Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly wanted to be sure they had a date that would support nascent pro football, a college star who could have been a war hero, and Prohibition.

Dodge Connelly (Clooney) is a hard-playing, hard-drinking coach/player, who also has a way with words. But he has a problem. His team has lost its sponsor and folded like so many other teams in the league. Dodge has a plan: hire war-hero and Princeton football sensation Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski of "The Office"), who is already lending his endorsements to any number of products. Soon the team acquires a new sponsor, promoter CC Frazier (Johathan Pryce), and his man Rutherford. They also pick up brassy reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger) on assignment from the Chicago Tribune to cover Rutherford, and who has information that the war hero may not be all that he seems.

Things sizzle predictably as Dodge and Lexie take an immediate like/dislike for each other as "Leatherheads" pays homage to the screwball comedies of the '30's and '40's. Zellweger has some good lines, but whoever told her to think of Betty Boop make a mistake. Krasinski is well cast as the bright, somewhat goofy, all-American. Pryce is excellent as the consummate businessman. The music by Randy Newman is a standout: a wonderful mix of period-type pieces and real standards. But this is Clooney's movie; his good humor and chemistry with Zellweger keep the whole thing aloft. Until the end, that is, when some missing shot or two leaves the audience a bit bewildered instead of in on the joke. It ends happily if not well.

Rated PG-13. 114 minutes. George Clooney - Director / Producer, Duncan Brantley - Writer, Rick Reilly - Writer, Grant Heslov - Producer, Casey Silver - Producer, Newton Thomas Sigel- Cinematographer, Randy Newman - Composer, James D. Bissell - Production Designer, Stephen Mirrione - Editor. Distributed by Universal Pictures.

Principla actors: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Root, Ezra Buzzington, John Vance, and Dan John Miller.