Review by Pamela Zoslov
With its dramatic real-life subject matter and stellar cast, you'd think
THE MONUMENTS MEN, the new movie directed by George Clooney, would be more, well, monumental. It's a comedy-drama about the Allied mission to rescue the art treasures of Europe from their methodical plunder by the Nazis. Clooney stars with Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville and Jean Dujardin as members of the special platoon of curators, museum directors and art historians who undertake the dangerous job.
All that star power works against the movie's plausibility, making it feel more like
OCEANS 11 in Army drag than a realistic history. Clooney, whose directorial efforts have been variable (ranging from
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK to
LEATHERHEADS), seems to have trouble settling on the right tone, so the movie lurches uneasily from M*A*S*H/Hogan's Heroes barracks comedy to mawkishness as two members of the platoon are killed. (The two who perish are played by the less famous of the bunch, so their deaths are preordained.)
