Pass the Popcorn! review

Rating: 6/10 (21 February 2014)

George Clooney is usually considered a good actor and an even better director. Although he directed only a few movies, almost all of them were good, especially The Ides of March and Good Night and Good Luck. So it was natural to expect much from The Monuments Men, particularly since, even before its release (and its postponement), it was considered an Oscar contender. Add to all this the cast of good and talented actors, and the interesting true story (I'd never heard of the monuments men before), and you'll get something that's probably too good to be true. But The Monuments Men isn't good: it's a very confusing movie that is either extremely comedic or extremely dramatic, and it doesn't work.
The Monuments Men are a group of art historians and museum directors and curators, led by Frank Stokes (George Clooney), who are sent to Europe during World War II in order to try and prevent the Nazis from stealing and destroying art pieces, and to find the art that has been stolen so they can return it to the rightful owners. They start off as a group, but are then sent, as couples, each in a different town, throughout France and Germany. The story is simple, but it's very difficult to follow what's happening, since there are characters who look similar (Hugh Bonneville is like a combination of Bill Murray and John Goodman) and only Matt Damon and George Clooney's characters are properly introduced, from the beginning. All the others eventually gain some personality towards the end of the movie.
It could be said that there's no villain in this movie. Of course, the Nazis are the bad guys, but it's not easy to feel the tension of war and fighting if you don't have a physical character that represents the bad guys. There are some shots of Hitler and various generals/officers, but all of them are just generically sleazy and irritating, like there hasn't been put any effort in making them quality villains, because we already know Nazis were bad people. Another big problem with the movie is that, for a lot of its duration, it seems like a collection of loosely connected individual stories, and when one ends and the other one begins, the most common reaction is "oh, I forgot this guy was in the movie". And this happened every time they showed Matt Damon on screen. Logically, you can't connect with the characters and feel for them – even when somebody dies, you couldn't care less.
The soundtrack isn't objectively bad, but it's more suited for a Disney movie than The Monuments Men, and it makes even the most serious and dramatic moments look pathetic and silly. The things that redeem this movie are the good performances by the cast, some well-executed scenes and the story – because, as I've already said, I had never heard of the monuments men before, this movie taught me something. It's just sad that such an important and interesting part of history has been ignored until now, and has been ruined with this movie, that can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama, so it goes from tragic scenes of death to scenes that look like spoofs. In short, you better skip this movie.
Rating: 6/10 Read more at passpopcorn.com