The Reel Geezers (Lorenzo Semple, Marcia Nasatir) on Leatherheads — a very frank, very intelligent pan by a pair of old pros who speak with believable authority about the studio-era classic comedies that George Clooney‘s film tries to emulate. This was “added” on 4.6 — these guys don’t post in advance of a film’s release?

Sample comments: (a) “These guys are running around like crazy trying to make a funny movie, and it’s embarassing…like being in a restaurant and no waiters or busboys”; (b) “It is singularly unfunny and doesn’t make a great deal fo sense”; (c) “It’s very hard to root for Clooney as the underdog”; and (d) “As soon as I heard about, I felt it would take a gun to make me see it. Comedy football movies! I can’t think of a genre less likely to be good.”
Semple refers to David Anspaugh‘s Hoosiers as “that basketball movie that came out about ten years ago.” It opened on 11.14.86.
It’s also interesting to consider the almost uniformly rough, dismissive comments about Clooney on Nikki Finke‘s blog, who wrote yesterday morning about the box-office failure of Leatherheads and in so doing used the word “fumble.” I warned against that!