Read More @HJ Reviews: Fun With Rules Yo Previews: Trailer, Studio Stills, Overview David Bruce, Webmaster

Before the Jessica Simpson Jinx, before there were any Mannings on the field, before the coin toss, the first down, or the first call, before Bowls became reason for celebration, and before the letters NFL came to mean anything at all, there lived a breed of men who played football because they loved it. And they were called Leatherheads.

During the era of the Leatherheads, the game of football was simple—get the ball to your end of the field as many times as you can. The rulebook was easy to follow—because there wasn't one. Playbooks weren't rocket science—because the players couldn't do rocket science if they tried. But in 1925, when the ragtag league of footballers began to collapse, a collegiate war hero is brought in to bring the league back to life, and a saucy journalist smells a scoop amid the huddle, the entire game changes. And that is where Leatherheads begins.

For Dodge Connelly (George Clooney), captain of the Duluth Bulldogs, football is his life (as it is for most of the members of his team). When asked what skills he has besides football, all Dodge can do is stare blankly at his interviewer. But let's just say, when he hears that crowds are lining up to see a certain young war hero play the game that has already collapsed around them, his talent for public relations and smooth talk flip into high gear.

To keep the game alive, he recruits young war hero Carter "The Bullet" Rutherford (John Krasinski) for the Bulldogs. Not only can he run faster than any other player on the field and pack stadiums tighter than a can of sardines, Carter also singlehandedly obtained the surrender of an entire platoon of German soldiers during WWI. And, well, as Dodge sees it, if Gem Razors and Adams Chewing Gum are counting on Carter's charm and talent to keep their companies alive, maybe, just maybe, he will be able to do the same for football.

But as all of us in this day and age of celebrity saturation know, the people we look up to aren't always all that. And after receiving a tip from one of Carter's fellow soldiers that Carter isn't exactly the golden boy he claims to be, Chicago Daily Tribune reporter Lexie Littleton (Renèe Zellweger) sets out to get the rest of the story.

Cue a movie about football, fans, celebrities, heroes, romance, and love that is unlike any I have watched before. With dialogue and scenarios that evoke the same feeling as Annie Get Your Gun's "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" or almost any of the songs from Damn Yankees, the entire movie is classic and entertaining in a way that unfolds like a real show from beginning to end. Its physical comedy and energetic scenes driven by the vibrant music of the era bring it into the realm of a Marx Brothers comedy show spread across the country's heartland and dropped onto a football field. And with chemistry flying between all three of its main players as well as with the game in between them all, it is a love story that I truly loved watching.

And really, at its core, that's what Leatherheads is. A story of love. It is about the love of the athlete for the game he plays, the love of the fans for the heroes we worship, and the love of a man for the woman he pursues. It is a reminder that the true nature of love is much more rough-and-tumble than incorporated and professional, its expression and its exchange much more about the slips and slides of the moment than carefully calculated plays from a playbook, and the players who find themselves both on the giving and receiving end of its passes much more human and much less godlike than so many of the celebrities and sports heroes of today. And to all of us out there trying to win the games of life or love, the message that it leaves us with is that although rules will enter the picture and strategy will become a part of every game, the most interesting, and often the most valuable wins are the ones that come from the heart.

As Matthew says in Matthew 23:12, "Whoever makes himself great will be made humble. Whoever makes himself humble will be made great." And although I don't know that I would quite characterize Dodge as humble, he in no way pretends to be anyone greater than he is. As many grand plays as he makes, he makes just as many foolish ones. As much smooth talking as he does, the straightforward honesty that he also delivers rings as true as anything else out there. In the end, it is nothing short of his true colors which win both the game of football and the game of love.

And as the movie ends and he leaves on his victory ride into the sunset, both Dodge and his story wave goodbye in my favorite way to see a romantic comedy end—happily, with an ever after in mind, but with both eyes wide open to beautiful truth that the greatest thing about love is not that it transforms us and our lives into a picture of flawless perfection, but that it knows every mistake we made today, it anticipates every disaster to come tomorrow, and it is here to stay.