Movie Review: The Monuments Men , less Schindlers List, More Kelly's Heroes

I love the history of this story.  The film focuses on an Allied squad of seven museum directors, curators, and art historians. They are tasked with entering Germany with the Allied forces during the closing stages of the second World War to rescue artworks plundered by the Nazis, saving them from destruction or damage, and returning them to their rightful owners. I love the idea of it, and its surprising nobody has considered turning it into a movie before, especially given all the reboots knocking about.

Its a stellar cast for this movie, Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Cate Blanchett with Clooney also stepping into the writers chair but on balance I think watch a documentary about the story on The History Channel instead as on this occasion “The Monuments Men” misses the mark with the delivery of this story.

For me the tone at times was a bit too light hearted with jokes and dialog that would help keep the movie light, and fun, yet in the middle of bombed and destroyed Europe during the end of WWII.  Other times it seems full of its own self importance, stuffy and it made the tone of this movie feel wrong. . It seems Clooney has attempted to tell the story without falling into the trap of every other WWII movie, but it felt like he couldn't get the tone right and it made the whole movie seem awkward and a little too Band of Brothers derivitive.

For these reasons I think that this movie probably is best viewed via Netflix or whatever your online rental store of choice is.. for me you can skip it in the cinema however.  It just isn't good enough to shell out cold hard for, even on Orange Wednesdays.

I guess The Monuments Men is not quite dire enough to make anybody’s list of all-time flops, but it’s close and clearly the studio thought so too as even the best-loved man in Hollywood cannot have enjoyed seeing his project pulled from the profitable autumn Oscar season and dumped in the frozen wasteland of February.

Watch the trailer..