The Monuments Men

How is it possible this film turned out so badly. Simply awful. I didn't know before this that it was possible for Bill Murray to suck. Clooney and Damon barely even phoned it in. One of the worst scripts ever written. There was no chemistry between any of the actors even those who are friends in real life. Clearly noone was enjoying being in it. They seemed to be struggling to bring themselves to utter the garbage that the writer was putting in their mouths. No humour, no heart, no credibility, no redeeming features. A blight on the career of everyone involved with it. And the marketers knew it. There were a couple of funny sequences in the trailer that were re-edited to change context, meaning and with lines that weren't even in the film. I'd rather watch Pearl Harbour on repeat than watch this again. I'd rather watch this: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...my-life-Shot-on-RED&highlight=worst+movie+red
 
Egg Born Son said:
How is it possible this film turned out so badly?
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Yours is an interestingly adverse reaction.

I actually liked the film. I thought all the actors did a fine job of being true to the characters, and of showing them building chemistry as a team as the film progressed. Fine understated performances from all, especially Bill Murray. I thought Clooney did a good job directing and acting. What I liked most about the film was the overall subtle quality.

It's like you and I saw completely different films.
 
Fantastic movie. When Bill Murry and Bob Balaban have a run in with a German soldier it's tense, and eventually a tender, touching scene. Mistrust (and the language barrier) settles down to just calmly accepting the situation and moving on. Not the blood bath we might have expected. Lots and lots of wonderful bits that enhance the telling of the story.
 
Bruce Watson said:
Yours is an interestingly adverse reaction.
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I tend to be fairly forgiving of films. I can usually find a way to enjoy them, in company I'm usually a Rifftrax kind of audience and a glorious failure can be quite entertaining (The Room). I don't discount the opinion of anyone who liked it but I could not find any way to enjoy this one. The preview promised war film comedy, it was not. In fact the preview grossly misrepresented the movie. Maybe my expectations were too high given the cast and the director. I've never seen an unenjoyable Clooney movie before. Everything he has directed has been good, everything he has acted in has been at worst entertaining, at best genius. But not this one. The only reason I didn't walk out was because I couldn't believe it wouldn't turn around by the end. I won't be watching it again to find out if I judged it harshly and there's only a handful of films on that list for me.
 
Egg Born Son said:
...but I could not find any way to enjoy this one.
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Well, I think we all have films like that. They just rub us the wrong way. My current bad film is "American Hustle". I lasted about 30 minutes. The critics raved, and audiences loved it. But like you, I couldn't find any way to enjoy that one.

Good thing there are lots of movies made every year, yes?
 
Definitely. To be honest if I didn't feel so betrayed by the preview, if I hadn't been so looking forward to it I might not have felt motivated to post here about it. I prefer to discuss movies I liked, in search of angles I might have missed and an excuse to watch them again. I guess I was expecting the kind of ensemble chemistry that made Oceans Eleven work but instead it seemed to alternate between endless dialogue exposition and forced banter and I wasn't feeling it. Rubbish or not this could have been a lot better. I read somewhere it was a rushed production and the original script had to be cut down severely. Films that fall short of their potential upset me far more than films that were never going to work.
 
Egg Born Son said:
Films that fall short of their potential upset me far more than films that were never going to work.
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I think it is an issue of 'original source' material... I just finished the book, upon which the movie was 'based'. If there were too many characters, placed somewhat distant from each other in the film... the book had many more names and places.

I would also point out the 'other' 'save the artwork' film... which perhaps is not remembered these days, titled 'The Train'(1964).

Here's a blurb from the Wiki on the contrast between 'film' and 'reality'...
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The Train is based on the factual 1961 book Le front de l'art by Rose Valland, the art historian at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, who documented the works of art placed in storage there that had been looted by the Germans from museums and private art collections throughout France and were being sorted for shipment to Germany in World War II.

In contrast to the action and drama depicted in the film, the shipment of art that the Germans were attempting to take out of Paris on August 1, 1944 was held up by the French Resistance with an endless barrage of paperwork and red tape and made it no farther than a railyard a few miles outside Paris.
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So, which do you think would 'make a movie'... a blithering wall of 'paper work'... or people shooting each other, time pressure to 'save the day', etc...

Same is true for the modern adaptation of the 'bigger story' which was the rescue of as much 'art' from the carnage as possible. (The 'train' is only reference in a small few second shot in "Monuments Men"...).

Even the most recent news story on the Stolen Art of Europe, where the art dealer Heldebrand Gurlit's son, Cornelius Gurlitt, was found to have an art horde collected by his father, has now died, and left the art horde to a swiss museum... would that make a 'theater filling' action film... or even an interesting drama...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
So, which do you think would 'make a movie'... a blithering wall of 'paper work'... or people shooting each other, time pressure to 'save the day', etc...
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The source material is irrelevent, the basic idea was interesting and source material has never been more than a suggestion, especially in hollywood. While I've said everything I have to say about the actual film, 'a blithering wall of paperwork' is an even more interesting idea to me. With a good, intelligent writer it would potentially make for a black comedy with Hogan's Heroes style germans dealing with a Yes Minister style bureaucracy.
 
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