By Staff Writer: Jada Boprie

Historical movies are not usually among my favorites, except for masterpieces like The King’s Speech, so I didn’t know what to expect when I saw The Monuments Men. But being written, directed, and acted by George Clooney, and including well-known actors like Matt Damon, Bill Murray, and Cate Blanchett, it’s safe to say I had high expectations.

The story follows George Clooney’s character, Frank Stokes, in the early 1940s as he gathers a rag-tag team of art specialists, including a sculptor and an architect, to help him recover artwork stolen by the Nazis in World War II. The team meets and splits up to find where the Nazis hid the art. Amidst the group, Bill Murray and Bob Balaban’s characters follow hunches, their personalities clashing along the way. Matt Damon meets a tough museum curator (Cate Blanchett) who hesitates to help him, while simultaneously falling for him. Clooney heads the group, trying to keep the flimsy team of seven together.

While some critics have been skinning the movie alive, I wouldn’t say it was a complete flop.

Cate Blanchett is phenomenal in the film. She plays Claire Simone, the curator of a museum that gets robbed by the Nazis. Blanchett’s character is the only one in the film that is successfully multi-dimensional, except for possibly Bill Murray. There is a balance of toughness, sweetness, and smoldering anger that make her character thoroughly convincing in every scene. In addition, she shares many scenes with Matt Damon and happens to elevate his rather stodgy performance. Although she is somewhat side-lined by the members of the Monuments Men group, her character Claire seems to be the one who cares most deeply and passionately about the artwork.

The story the movie tries to convey is actually one of the more fascinating and less well-known art heists in history. Hitler had his Nazis plundering homes, galleries, and museums for many reasons that circle around the fact that Hitler wanted to erase an entire population, which included destroying what they had created. It’s a tremendously important story that should be told well, and it’s too bad George Clooney missed the mark.

Although Clooney was given a talented cast, a $70,000,000 budget, and a book from which to base the movie, The Monuments Men has many flaws, mainly having to do with flow. Everything from the script to the timing interrupts the flow of the film.

Script-wise, the movie is quite bland and uneven. It almost seems like it was written by three different people that couldn’t decide between writing a comedy, drama, or action movie. It ends up being caught between serious scenes that Blanchett nails and hopeless one-liners that give talented actors like Murray nothing to work with. The lack of quality script makes it difficult for the characters to interact and evolve, so that main characters played by John Goodman and Jean Dujardin end up being utterly forgettable.

The film has a running time of almost two hours, and I honestly can’t tell you how most of it was spent. There is a very slow buildup to scenes that should have made more of an impact, so that it feels like we wait the entire movie for one important, satisfying scene at the end. Unlike movies that fill up every minute with scenes and characters important to the story, The Monuments Men wastes a significant amount of time trying to make itself a comedy.

These flaws, and some others, keep the movie from reaching its full potential. But what really makes this movie a bit of a disappointment is that in the beginning, a big-picture question is introduced:

Is art more important than the people who create it?

In my opinion, Clooney could have based his entire movie on this point. It does start out that way, with a stark contrast between the enchanting works of art and the men risking their lives to save them. However, the comedy in the film is cumbersome and blots out the question, making the point of the film unclear, except for simply telling the history of the story.

While this is not the nicest review, I should say that The Monuments Men is still entertaining and it tells a story that should be remembered more often. I recommend it for any art or history buff, or someone like me who just enjoys a good treasure hunt.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CreneTs7sGs&w=560&h=315]