Will the Spider-Man remakes ever stop? This is a serious question, which is way more interesting than anything George Clooney’s The Monuments Men has to offer.
This film is really, really bad. The central question it makes a pathetic attempt to answer is whether art is worth dying for. Going into it I was expecting a welcome defense of art in the face of growing disdain for liberal arts majors and the Common Core’s war on literature.* But the opening scenes were so over the top and cheesy I genuinely thought the film might be a satire — not what I was expecting, but still some potential.
Nope. Twenty minutes in, I had to accept I had wasted $12.
But, if you can get past the over-the-top music, mediocre sets, George Clooney’s bad acting,* a confusing and disjointed plot, and the EXHAUSTED tale of those bad Nazis and terrible Russians (who in this case want to destroy all the art!) — the film has some redeeming moments: Matt Damon’s character’s miraculous decision not to cheat on his wife, and a shot of the U.S. flag in a brief ‘MERICA moment.
You also learn some cool stuff. Hitler was going to build a giant museum with ALL the art, and he may or may not have bombed England because he didn’t want to destroy the superior art in Paris.
To be fair, the film does leave you with some encouragement: Hitler and the Nazis may have killed millions of people and destroyed a ton of art, but they didn’t destroy the Madonna.* Now you have even more reason to hate Hitler!
Maybe it was a satire — judge for yourselves.
Just kidding. Don’t see this movie.
*Full disclosure: I’m obsessed with Berlin and narrowly missed Matt Damon and George Clooney while they were filming there — I had (clearly unrealistic) high hopes for this film.
**I don’t care how many times George Clooney has been named “sexiest man alive” — he’s not sexy and his voice is irritating and patronizing. And with the exception of Fantastic Mr. Fox, he’s always in bad movies.
***No word on our role in destroying Dresden, a German city that was once a center of European modern art.