Fine opportunity, great source material & an excellent cast completely wasted.

Rating: Null/10 (18 February 2014)

Written, directed and starring Hollywood darling, George Clooney; a cast to die for with five Oscars between them; a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot of audacious international thievery What could possibly go wrong with The Monuments Men?
How long do you have?
No, that's not fair. The Monuments Men isn't a stinker by any means. It is just a dull, confused, protracted almost film. It is almost exciting, almost clever, almost fun Based on the true story of a task force of just seven museum curators, directors and art historians, dubbed The Monuments Men, Clooney's fifth film in the director's chair stumbles through Hitler's mission to steal Europe's greatest artworks for his planned Führermuseum (Leader's Museum) and the Allied mission to steal them back and return them to their rightful homes. Battling squaddies and generals with no love for, or understanding of, art as well as the armies of the Third Reich, it was a dangerous and largely doomed mission to retrieve unimaginable art collections and prevent their certain destruction should Hitler fail to conquer the world.
The source material is fantastic. What a remarkable operation! The Monuments Men should be a war romp in the vein of Kelly's Heroes or Where Eagles Dare but Clooney seems unsure whether it should be a Boy's Own adventure, a comedy knockabout or a history lesson with sensitive and sincere bon mots to make the audience reflect admiringly. It fails on every count and winds up as a WWII Ocean's Seven with a severe identity crisis.
The stars that fill this two-hour somnambulistic mess coast along in the company of good friends, the knowledge of a good pay cheque and a free trip around Europe. It shows. There is no passion, urgency or fervor, just a clumsy jumble of ideas with no real conviction and little direction.
It is very hard to connect the director of The Monuments Men with the man who helmed Good Night, and Good Luck and The Ides of March. And while it should be fun watching Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, Jean Dujardin and Bob Balaban play at overweight, inept soldiers in the company of Cate Blanchett, it is just tedious.
The Monuments Men is filled with opportunities for excitement and adventure but instead of a film we can lose ourselves in and a motley crew of characters we can root for, we are left disappointed and with the feeling that Clooney really should have done better.
More upsettingly, a generation who have never heard of the real Monuments Men and the amazing mission they risked their lives for will brush it off as a bland fiction and forget it on the drive home.
What a waste of a fine opportunity, a great plot and an excellent cast.