screen |skr_n| |skrin| |skri_n| noun • a blank, typically white or silver surface on which a photographic image is projected : the world's largest movie screen • movies or television; the motion-picture industry : she's a star of the stage as well as the screen. verb [ trans. ] • protect (someone) from something dangerous or unpleasant • evaluate or analyze (something) for its suitability for a particular purpose or application


Sunday, April 06, 2008

Leatherheads

The concept is winning but the tone is a mess. Is it a football history or a screwball comedy? Some of the scenes were semi-serious with moody lighting and whispery, sexy, Out of Sight-style acting. Other scenes were right out of a Howard Hawks comedy. Bold lighting, zany music, but a little slow with the snappy dialogue. Screwball comedy needs to be faster and louder. Clooney’s biggest enemy is himself here. He wants the best of both genres. Instead he gets a boring combination.
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous10:35 PM

    An aspect of most great screwball comedy, even "What's Up Doc?" is that you have a character who is completely out of their element. One that the other characters talk and run circles around. He is almost planted in the middle of the scene and everything happens around him in wide shots, as if you were watching a play. This movie is instead shot in a conventional manor. And their is no Eddie Bracken. Nobody whose befuddled face plays as the punchline.

    It actually seems more like a Martin and Lewis movie, except that both actors are playing the Dean Martin role.

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