"See, Iâm not just a pretty face!â George Clooney says in The Monuments Men. Because heâs George Clooney, he then smiles charmingly, and because heâs George Clooney, you think, âThatâs right! You arenât just a pretty face!â Because George Clooney! Still, itâs sometimes easy to forget that Clooneyâin addition to being a pretty face, in addition to having a charming smileâis also a producer and a director. The Monuments Men is the fifth feature heâs directed, and it also might be the worst.
Clooney is reliably fantastic as an actor and slightly less so as a director. He killed it with 2002âs adaptation of Chuck Barrisâs insane memoir Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and 2005âs Edward R. Murrow film Good Night, and Good Luckâbut his screwball comedy Leatherheads and his political drama The Ides of March both tumbled down the memory hole. The Monuments Men isnât terrible, but it steadfastly refuses to live up to its promise. Based on a true story, itâs set in the twilight of World War II and follows a group of men trying to find and recover artworks that Hitler has stolen. Clooney heads things up, and heâs backed up by a bunch of other guys you like: Bill Murray! John Goodman! Matt Damon! Jean Dujardin! Bob Balaban! That guy from Downton Abbey!
It would be unfair to expect The Monuments Men to feel like Oceanâs WWII, but what it does feel like is⌠not much of anything. A plinking score by Alexandre Desplat is the one constant as the script veers from comedy to sentimentalityâand frustratingly, the cast is split up as soon as theyâre introduced. Off on their own, Murray and Balaban have some first-rate moments, and Cate Blanchettâthe one woman at this sausage partyâboth accomplishes the most and seems to be having the most fun. But no one else gets enough screen time to do much of anything. Despite Clooneyâs best intentions, the whole thing is halfway down the memory hole before itâs even finished.