It is the hunt for priceless Nazi treasure that seems to have turned up worthless hokum: George Clooney's star-studded second world war caper, The Monuments Men, has been getting a panning from the critics.
Featuring Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, Cate Blanchett and John Goodman, the humorous tale focuses on a real-life group of men and women who risked their lives to track down art stolen by Adolf Hitler and prevent its destruction. As well as co-writing and directing – his fifth stint behind the camera – Clooney portrays Frank Stokes, based on the US army officer and leading art conservationist, George Stout, who repatriated tens of thousands of pieces of art from the Nazis.
The film had been tipped for an awards season run, but missed the cut-off date for this year's Oscars. It will now debut in US cinemas on 7 February and in the UK a week later, at a time when Hollywood's focus is inevitably on the movies hoping to shine at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on 2 March.
Critics praised the film's sumptuous cast but generally questioned its tone and pacing. "It's not only the great works of European art that have gone missing in The Monuments Men; the spark of writer-director-star George Clooney's film-making is absent too," wrote Scott Foundas of Variety. "In adapting writer Robert M Edsel's account of the men charged with protecting the western world's aesthetic treasures from wartime destruction, Clooney has transformed a fascinating true-life tale into an exceedingly dull and dreary caper pic cum art-appreciation seminar – a museum-piece movie about museum people."
The Playlist's Drew Taylor commented: "Clooney talked openly about having a hard time nailing down the tone of The Monuments Men since it oscillates so wildly between goofiness and heart-tugging sentimentality, and the final product shows that he was never able to reconcile these two halves of the story. It would be one thing if the wackiness of these missions was wholly involving, but they rarely are."
He added: "These guys are supposedly the best in their respective fields, but they're lousy soldiers, and try as Clooney might, with soaring musical cues from Alexandre Desplat, inspirational voiceover narration, and shots of a billowing American flag, it's awfully hard to give a shit about whether they live or die and whether or not they succeed in their mission. Especially since, you know, the Holocaust."
For the Wrap, Alonso Duralde added: "The Monuments Men rushes through the preliminary exposition, and dispenses with training in one quick montage, so by the time the squad breaks up into pairs and disperses throughout the continent, we don't know them well enough to be amused by their interactions (there's a running gag about how bad Damon's French is, but it goes from amusing to irritating after excessive repetition). It might have benefited Clooney and [co-writer Grant] Heslov to spend a little more time on the set-up and less on the saving-the-art scenes, which grow a bit logy and repetitive."
The Monuments Men currently maintains a 25% "rotten" rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, though from a small sample of just eight reviews. Not every critic has dismissed the film, however. Geeknation.com's Todd Gilchrist wrote: "The Monuments Men makes a welcome and superlative addition to the pantheon of war films, because it turns high-concept storytelling into a meaningful true-story tribute, drawing audiences in with monuments – the stars populating its A-list ensemble – and then truly making them care about the men whose very real efforts enabled their wattage to burn so brightly."
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