George Clooney’s latest movie as a director and star, The Monuments Men, benefits from a central concept that’s so inherently interesting, it’s pretty much guaranteed to at least hold your interest through to the end. It tells the based-on-a-true-story of a crew of art scholars who were put together at the end of the second World War to track down and steal back all of the art that the Nazis stole over the course of their plundering of Europe, before the art in question can be destroyed or disappeared forever. It also benefits from the fact that it features one of the most exciting ensemble casts that’s been put together in a long time, a cast that includes names like Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, Jean Duardin, and the always likable Bob Balaban.
The problem with The Monuments Men is that it takes all of the assets that it started out with and does everything it can to squander them. The story, while still interesting, loses nearly all of its dramatic heft because of the script’s ham-fisted monologuing and the soundtrack’s punishingly on-the-nose musical accompaniment. The ensemble cast is neutered when, after a couple of fun scenes where they effectively bounce their personalties off of each other, they’re all split up and sent off in different directions—a decision that also helps the storytelling to be a little formless and lacking in forward momentum.
The Monuments Men is the sort of movie that, at one point, completely glosses over the struggles that would come with getting a bunch of old and out of shape men ready for war, and, at another point, tries to drain a character death of all the drama its worth, before we’ve even had a chance to properly get to know the character. Ultimately, it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to know exactly what it wants to be, or what kind of story it was looking to tell. World War II is such an interesting period in history, and this stable of actors are all so wildly talented, that the movie manages to remain watchable, but while you’re watching it you can’t help but let your mind wander to and focus on the sad truth that it had the potential to be so much more.
