Hump Day Quickie

Just burning through the last minutes of the day and figured I'd give you a quick, fresh review of a movie I saw last night; Monuments Men. This movie stars and is directed by George Clooney, and he managed to gather a slew of other stars to come to his aid including Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, and many others. Seriously, this movie is stacked with talent. I can't say that I know much about the actual history surrounding the movie or the book it was based on, so I was a bit excited about a completely fresh perspective that I was hoping Mr. Clooney was able to deliver. If we're being honest with ourselves, then I don't think many of our friends and family were aware of this group of individuals who assisted in recovering tens of thousands of priceless works of art. That's what ol' Georgey was trying to do; bring this great story to the masses. The story? Direct from the Monuments Men website, The Monuments Men were a group of men and women from thirteen nations, most of whom volunteered for service in the newly created Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, or MFAA. Most had expertise as museum directors, curators, art scholars and educators, artists, architects, and archivists. Their job description was simple: to save as much of the culture of Europe as they could during combat. He brought the story all right, but I wouldn't proclaim the greatness of it too much. Whatever, this is supposed to be a quickie so here you go. The Monuments Men.

The movie starts out with George Clooney asking Matt Damon out for a drink to discuss his proposal of gathering those that would help save the art of Europe from the clutches of the nasty Nazi Germans. The scene resounds too closely with my memories of the Ocean movies, and George's character is the same dry, calculating character as well. No biggie, I can move past that. The movie continues in this dry, sometimes comical manner, as we gather up the main troops. The troops are of course mostly older men since all those young enough are already on the front lines. Some of the characters obviously have a back story, but we're not privy to it and the story just moves along without it. That's usually fine for an action flick, but I expected a bit more out of this one. This happens throughout the film, and it can't seem to decide to use dry stiff humor, heartfelt drama, or cruel war blast scenes; instead it just sprinkles them throughout and hopes you don't mind that they couldn't make up their mind of what kind of movie they're making. They are All-Stars after all, right? Nope, not good enough. Too many times the movie seems to wander off course; it's as if George had all these great ideas he wanted to convey but then had to whittle it down to the dry fun story he thought Hollywood could handle. But then he went back in and added the stuff he wanted anyway, so it just didn't fit quite right. Overall I give The Monuments Men 4/7 Fox Tails. From a pure movie experience it is only about a 3, but the fact that it opens this story to the public gives it that extra Tail to move it into my 'barely like' category. The characters' developments were conflicted and they just didn't try too hard, but the story itself is interesting enough for you to Redbox this baby when it becomes available. Hey, you could even just read the book The Monuments Men instead of waiting.

Side note: I was able to slide in and see this movie for freedizzle by accompanying my lovely lady and her coworkers of the MIA as they rented out a theater to see this tale about art saviors for themselves. The MIA even had one of the original Monuments Men on their curatorial staff once upon a time, and the museum itself recently acquired a recovered piece that adds to the other masterpieces available for public viewing. And by public viewing I mean that all except special exhibits are free to any and everyone. Pretty cool. Take that Nazi scum.