Rating of
2/4
Clooney. How could you.
memento_mori - wrote on 05/15/14
It is always such a pity when something that had the utmost potential to be great suddenly misses the mark, and for me, The Monuments Men has nothing to show for itself other than being an insulting joke in poor taste.
Nothing is worse in a war movie than a story that doesn't even take war seriously. Inglourious Basterds was already treading on thin ice, but it gave a lot of people a certain satisfaction, myself included. This film, though, this is something else. It is an extra-comfortable, jingoistic parody of itself, and frankly, too much for my patience.
From the introduction to the main execution to the conclusion this film spews one bad line and one badly written scene after the other.
The characters are given their five minutes of what I guess would be considered development, but at the end of their pointless scenes (and trust me, there are many of them) they feel just as pointless as when the scene began.
It was so unfocused about what it was trying to say, placing attention on all the wrong people with no particular outcome. The transitions between happy and sad were terrible, I still can't imagine how you could ruin the tone of your film with such lousy pacing, writing and editing, two of the most essential parts of a historical drama.
More on the editing: yeah, it was horrendous. You could practically see them filming every scene in non-chronological order and eventually throwing them together to make it work somehow. There is no natural flow of sequences and events, often going from place to place with uneven fades into the next scene and a flimsy piano melody to unnecessarily underline the abnormal and stupid situation this movie has us in.
The lightheartedness which George Clooney directed this film with is almost insulting. Stop it with the flat, unfunny dialogue and minor moments of threat and danger, this isn't a Saturday morning cartoon.
Half of all the scenes in this film don't even serve a point other than offer minor comic relief which doesn't even make sense. There is a scene involving Bill Murray smoking with a German soldier. I demand to know who was hungover enough to write a scene as dumb enough as that one.
Unclear, poorly edited and unbelievably goofy for no reason at all, The Monuments Men is about as far away from becoming a war movie classic as possible. What a waste of a great cast, a great story, and most of all: time.
