Annoyingly Boring

Rating: 4/10 (4 May 2014)

The Monuments Men was a great idea. Art scholars and architects going to save priceless sculptures and paintings from the clutches of Nazis during WW2 sounds like a thrilling film, and directed and starring George Clooney along with heavyweights Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Cate Blanchett. How could this go wrong?
Well, it did. Horribly wrong. The writing is flat, it thinks its interesting but it isn't. The characters are all flat as paper and the comedy the writers tried to use to hide the characters flatness does not help. The comedy is horrible, not funny or intelligent, just horrible and really your making a WW2 film here, how much of a comedy do you want to make it.
The acting is all done well enough but like I have said before, great actors can only do so much for badly written characters and actors like Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and John Goodman give it their all and are definitely the best parts of the film while the others just don't even seem to try.
The score of the film feels so clichéd and generic that it actually makes certain scenes worse. A scene where 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' plays and it has no dramatic purpose whatsoever, why was it included.
The film does look beautiful however, fantastic sets and costumes combined with some great directing from Clooney make it a joy to look at, but sadly not a joy to watch.
Overall, The Monuments Men is just disappointment. It has some great scenes and some fantastic direction from Clooney, but everything else is just a poorly executed WW2 drama that couldn't hold a candle to even the oldest of War films. Top tip - watch Full Metal Jacket.