"Leatherheads" DVD Review

Clooney stars as Dodge Connolly, a football hero slightly past his prime who's desperately in need of an infusion of cash to keep his team, and the league, afloat. Dodge, always a man with a plan, figures out that one way to draw fans and money to the league is to get college football star/war hero Carter Rutherford (Krasinski) to join the team. Carter agrees, but reporter Lexie Littleton (Zellweger) thinks there's something not quite on the up-and-up about Carter's war story. And just to make things really messy, both Carter and Dodge find themselves falling for the beautiful but determined reporter.

The Bonus Features

George Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov team up for an entertaining commentary track that's fairly informative. The DVD also includes 9 good but not great deleted scenes, a way-too-short bit with Clooney as prankster, and a featurette with a behind-the-scenes look at how the football scenes were choreographed (it really makes you appreciate just what the actors went through). But the real standouts of the extra material are the "Football's Beginning: The Making of Leatherheads" featurette which shows how the film was conceived and developed, and the "Visual Effects Sequences" featurette. The visual effects material is short but it's amazing to discover just how much CGI was actually used to make the film feel totally authentic.