Movie Review – The Monuments Men

The Monuments Men (2014) – The story of members of the Allied forces in World War II tasked with finding and saving art work and buildings in the midst of the war.  They also had to track down and return the thousands of pieces of art stolen by Nazi forces.

Every once in a while I run into a movie that I wish could have tried to be just a little bit more.  There’s a lot going for this movie.  Great historical story of the real life Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, a great cast (George Clooney, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett and veteran character actor Bob Balaban, among others) and a wonderful look (the cinematography is really outstanding).  The problem is really in the script.  There’s never a feeling of a continuous story line.  It’s more of a long series of loosely connected sketches.  The characters feel shallow, not giving this great cast much to work with at any point.  There’s very little passion, just a group of actors walking through a thread bare script, trying to make something out of very little.

Another problem with the script is its overall tone.  Clooney, who produced, wrote and directed the movie, went for a breezy, light comedy approach to the story.  So immediately you lose any sense of the danger or challenge of the work these people (the real life “Monuments Men” were actually men and women) were trying to do.  That immediately sacrificed a lot of the meat of the story.

My last issue with the script is its cavalier approach to the history of the unit.  While admitting that in making a story work on the big screen means moving some of the actual history around sometimes.  I’m fine with that.  In this script Clooney basically ejects most of the history right over the side.  The story becomes a very American centered one, despite the fact that the British led the way in this kind of work and the actual unit drew from countries all over Europe.  There is a British member and a French one.  Two members get killed.  Care to guess which two?  While virtually everything in the movie did happen, the approach to the story has a strong resemblance to a game of pick up sticks.  It’s just a mish-mash and the feel of the story suffers for it.

Is it a fun way to spend a couple hours?  Sure.  Is it a movie you should go out of your way to watch?  Not really.

Call it a very low level 3 star rating.

Rating – *** Worth A Look