Wiggly Socks Movie Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Oh, football! Professional football! In 1925 football was so – sweetly innocent.

There is Mrs. Moo, black and white cow person, one horn crooked, one straight, contemplating life and pasture, when a bunch of odd humans runs by. Before she can ponder this, they are back, piling up right in front of her. Really, even Mrs. Moo stops chewing faced with such oddity.

George Clooney creates a dream like visual of the changes that happened to professional football, once a game for “the boys who did not want to grow up”, when money discovered the game and sets of rules were enacted.

His character, Dodge, is really past today’s standards but determined to play the game- and win it. After his team loses its backer to bankruptcy, he enlist a recent college football star “Bullet” Carter, young war hero, to play for his team. Carter is a new phenomenon: he plays the game, poses for adds, gives interviews and collects payments through his agent, CC Frazier. Following this hero comes, surprisingly, a smart, sharp and beautiful reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Lexie. Lexie breaks into the “boys” press box but her intentions go deeper than just to write up the game. Her editor had a leak that Carter is not all he seems to be and Lexie is about the find out who Carter really is.


It’s funny, truly unpretensionaly funny, and that is so rare that I was grateful for it. Clooney uses number of directorial tricks to make this, rather sad story, lighthearted and hilarious to watch- from Mrs. Moo and Mrs. Bulldog to a man stuck in the pool, and the field of mud of the last battle. Most of the tricks are pictorial, but some are in dialog. My favorite is Lexie asking Dodge to get on the motorbike: Get on sweetie, and I’ll buy you a soda pop. Now, ladies that’s feminism. Combined with nice hats and very colorful outfits.

Unlike most of the films currently on the market, the lightness covers deep, disturbing problems and corruption. The more you think about the gist, the less there is to smile about. When Lexie writes her story, she opens the door to much more than one man’s indiscretion; when Carter’s agent fights her, he exposes the roots of today’s media servitude.

The four main actors, representing certain human traits, are all equally good at their parts, Renee Zellweger is never cheap, George Clooney never overbearing, Jonathan Pryce is never sleazy and young John Krasinski never naïve. Clooney makes no mistakes in directing his own character; he knows his own limitations and never crosses them. There is number of small parts, all well acted out and all thought out to actually bring something to the story.

The actors have quality help in creating the dreamy, sepia colored vision of the twenties: classically framed camera, lighting, and wonderful costumes, framing is just right, and editing is very sensitive to the story. There are slapstick and screwball elements mixed with the nostalgia, but it did not bother me. There is of course the final scene, but again I could live with that. It was the lead to it that I had found a bit too long in the tooth.

Is it realistic? Despite all those serious questions masked by laughter, it is not. It doesn’t analyze, nor proposes any answers either. It is a memory of the past, and as such it wears rose-colored glasses, even if in this case it is sepia colored camera filter.

This is George Clooney’s third directorial project (Confession of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night and Good Luck) and in a sense the lightest. Yet, even here the shadow of the future is felt, the shadow that will take an enjoyable sport and turn it into big business closed to those who once so loved it by price and requirements.

Directed by George Clooney, Camera: Newton Thomas Sigel, Screenplay: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly, Music: Randy Newman, Cast: George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce.