George Clooney
Matt Damon
Bill Murray
John Goodman
Jean Dujardin
Bob Balaban
Hugh Bonneville
Cate Blanchett

George Clooney
Grant Heslov

118 mins.
Drama, War
February 7, 2014

Rated PG-13 for some images of war violence and historical smoking. (MPAA)

“The Monuments Men,” which has been marketed ad nauseam, is supposed to be a film; but it’s really just a collection of scenes. This isn’t cohesive stuff. No, not at all. This film wants to be many things at once: a war drama, an action-comedy, a take on a war propaganda film (check out some of the music: drumbeats, horns, etc.), a thriller, and more. But it doesn’t do any of those things well. How could it? It would need to be near perfect for all of those genres to coalesce into something compelling. And it’s far from perfect.

This is a shell of a film. There’s nothing substantive at its core. As a result, the comedy doesn’t work, and neither does the drama, for the most part. There are a few bright spots during the second half of the film, though. But they aren’t enough. I was neither interested nor invested in anything here.

Why make another film about World War II and not go for it? We don’t need any more films about that war, so you really need to bring it if you want to add to the piles upon piles of films that already exist on that subject. By focusing on a group of art scholars who want to protect artistic masterpieces from destruction and despoliation during the end of World War II (this film’s major events occur during July 1944), the filmmakers think that they’ve found a different and interesting way to approach this subject matter. Well, they haven’t. There’s just no momentum here; and, unfortunately, all of the talent attached to the film has been wasted.

Where’s the urgency? Since the characters are thinly drawn (they’re merely representatives of character types), the pacing needs to be spot-on. It’s not. Also, there needs to be more style to account for the lack of character development. Wes Anderson knows how to make that work in his best films; but George Clooney, who directed and co-wrote this film, has dropped the ball here. He’s a better director than this film suggests; but he can’t direct his way out of his script. He should’ve written a script that’s more suited to his directing style: He needs substantive dialogue.

With all of that said, I don’t want to overstate my displeasure with “The Monuments Men.” It’s not a bad film … but so what? It’s like a nice-looking car that won’t start.

Verdict: Whatever to OK

About: (Source: monumentsmen)

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men focuses on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys – seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 – possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind’s greatest achievements.