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George Clooney’s new movie Leatherheads pulls a lot from the cinema playbook to try to appeal to everyone. An awkward mix of romance, sports and screwball comedy, it throws all these at its audience, hoping they’ll enjoy it. What ends up is a disappointingly mediocre mish-mash falling surprisingly flat given its big name talent. Mildly amusing at best, Leatherheads is overlong, talky and lacking in many big laugh-out loud plays. Where’s Tony and Jessica when you need them?

Clooney is Dodge Connelly, a charming, brash pro-football player for the Duluth Bulldogs in 1925. 1920’s Pro-football is a free-wheeling, no-holds barred type of game that has squirrly players with the names of Stump, Curly, Hardleg and Zoom with about as much respect as Jason Taylor on Dancing with the Stars. Football’s real popularity lies in college games (it seems not much has changed since then), where the real athletes are.

There’s none bigger than Carter “Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski), a WWI war hero whose become America’s star college athlete and favorite son. Seeing Carter as a cash cow, Connelly, in full Jerry Jones mode, avidly recruits him to give the ailing Bulldogs and pro-football in general a shot in the arm. Meanwhile, star reporter Lexie Littleton is assigned Carter when it’s discovered there might be some bullet holes in his war hero story that could tarnish his reputation. All the while a newly appointed football commissioner armed with a new set of rules is out to permanently change the game of pro-football.

Leatherheads is an uneasy, unfunny mix of different types of movies with Clooney in full creative control here, starring, directing, co-producing and probably scripting a few lines here and there. He helms an uneven, underwritten movie undermined by too many changes in tone and cardboard characters. Of all these elements, Leatherheads works best as a sports comedy. Its initial sections start out well as it introduces us to the era, then drags too much in the center, changing from sports movie to romantic comedy to screwball comedy, back to sports and ending up with romance again.

Clooney is one of contemporary cinema’s most likable, charming actors, and credit his undeniable charm for his Oscar nomination for last fall’s vastly overrated Michael Clayton. He possesses a self-confident wit and charm here too (not to mention a lot of close ups), though his smirking self-love grows thin by Leatherheads predictable last act. With her typical squinty eyes and pursed lips, Zellweger seems perfectly cast, exuding an elegant period look. She’s as charming and quick-witted as her co-star, but her artificial, forced chemistry with Clooney rings false in Leatherheads making their pairing hard to buy. The Office’s Krasinski is blandly likable in empty Ben Affleck fashion, his character too one-dimensional and shallow to be memorable.

The costumes, the sets, even the music, nicely reflect the 1920’s era, too bad they’re lost amid Leatherheads uneven tone and problematic script. Clooney gives himself the best scenes and of course the girl, but it still works better when it’s focused on the sport itself, calling plays, scrapping or wallowing in mud. Leatherheads opening and closing scenes of football are best, with the mid-section its weakest, featuring an unfunny, out-of-place Keystone cops-esque chase scene not to mention one too many talky, draggy scenes away from the football field trying to resolve the unnecessary subplot involving Krasinski’s character.

You’d think with Clooney’s allure this’d be far more appealing, but baseball has generally been cinema’s favorite son, and after Leatherheads, that won’t change. Bull Durham, The Natural and Field of Dreams are all classics in their own right. What’s more, ESPN ranked a basketball movie, Hoosiers, as the top sports film of all time. Though recent hits Remember the Titans and Friday Night Lights had their compelling moments, the best football movies came ages ago, with 1993’s Rudy or 1971’s Brian’s Song.

Digressions aside, Leatherheads is nowhere in the league of any of those aforementioned films, even with two Oscar winners and a splashy, oversized budget. Serviceable but largely forgettable, Clooney gives his level best with Leatherheads but comes up a few yards short of a great movie.

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