Who's in It: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski
The Basics: It's 1925, and Clooney is the leader of the Duluth Bulldogs, one of the country's first pro football teams. Along comes too-good-to-be-true player Krasinski, a war hero whose star power saves the financial viability of the game and who makes Clooney compete not only for alpha-male status on the team but also for the affection of muckraking journalist Zellweger.
What's the Deal? Director Clooney sure went to a lot of trouble for a movie that ends up being not all that necessary. More than anything, it wants to be a fast-talking Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks screwball comedy from 70 years ago. But the fast-talking isn't fast enough (and it's usually only Clooney and Zellweger doing it, anyway), and the words spoken aren't always funny enough. Meanwhile, Krasinski's job is to stand around and be the straight man while Clooney mugs for the camera.
Who Should Have Been Brought in to Make the Script Go About 100 mph Faster: Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the creators of Gilmore Girls, which was the last decade's most Preston Sturges-ish cultural product.
Weakest Link: Zellweger, whose current lack of facial expressiveness (see my column) allows for zero believability that she's anything at all like a tough-cookie-go-getter of a journalist. You never stop thinking for a second that this is a movie star with everything invested in being loved, rather than someone confident enough to always be tossing off barbed comments no matter who's listening.
Ubiquitous-Character-Actor Alert: Stephen Root, who plays the always drunk reporter "Suds" and shares most of his scenes with Zellweger. No, I didn't know his name until just now, either. But he's popped up in four films so far this year — Mad Money, Over Her Dead Body, Drillbit Taylor and this one — and after you see the same person over and over and you keep thinking, Oh, it's that guy again, the nagging need to finally go and find out who it is takes over.