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9/03/2014

The Monuments Men (2014) or, George Clooney's The Lecture



+ Worst Movie of the Year

Lots of actors you'd think you'd love to see together in a movie on the poster for George Clooney's The Monuments Men


Near the end of WWII, an art lover lieutenant gives the President a persuasive pitch; to save the European art heritage from the looting, insane Nazis. He gathers a team of 'mutts' for the task.
Monuments Men is a movie that unfortunately falls completely on its ass:
It has an uninspired score (by otherwise great composer Alexandre Desplat (The King's Speech (2010)) and uninspired photography (by otherwise great cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (Walk the Line (2005)) and not one really good actor's performance, which is all-the-more disappointing because it includes great actors Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Jean Dujardin and John Goodman, besides co-writer/director George Clooney (Good Night and Good Luck. (2005)) himself.
It's a real shame, because the basic story is solid for what could have been a great war suspense heist flick about the salvation of some great art from man's own stupidity. But MM isn't the bombastic suspense-grabber it should have been, but instead a long, tedious exercise, in which I kept thinking of all the fine things it could have been.
Only once or twice did the film's unlikely humor result in a smile on my face. Unlikely is also the collected team in MM, which rams home its fairly simple points over and over again and keeps adding expository information throughout.
Sad to say, Monuments Men feels like a lecture given by Clooney, and fiction film isn't the right medium for a lecture.
The film is, by the way, co-written (more like co-responsible(...)) by Grant Heslov (The Ides of March (2011)).

Related posts:

George Clooney: 2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Burn After Reading (2008) or, Idiocy 2008 actor
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) or, The Gong Show Killer director-actor
Solaris (2002) - A suffering space question mark actor




Watch the trailer here

Budget: 70 mil. $
Box office: 154.7 mil. $
= Flop

What do you think of The Monuments Men?

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