Utter, total, turd.
The prospect of a cast featuring Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett and George Clooney is mouthwatering to say the least. Add to the fact that The Monuments Men is Clooney’s directorial follow up to the widely successful Ides of March and we are talking about one of the most anticipated films of 2014. It is difficult then to fathom how the end product is so bland and forgettable.
Aside from a typically strong Cate Blanchett performance as a Parisian art curator, the rest of the cast sleepwalks through this one with even the great Bill Murray offering zero respite. Worse than the acting is the script which is so humourless and self righteous it is actually difficult to sit through The Monuments Menuntil the end.
The message seems to be that art is more valuable than anything, even life, but against the back drop of the second world war this idealistic attitude is borderline offensive to the millions of young men and women that lost their lives. Tonally the film can’t decide what it wants to be. It flits between ‘comedy’ (in the loosest sense of the word) and forced camaraderie to create a frustrating viewing experience.
After universally poor reviews hopefully we can collectively forget about The Monuments Men as a species and just pretend that Bill Murray was never even involved. George Clooney should probably stay in front of the camera exclusively from now on, he is a handsome bastard after all.