REVIEW - THE MONUMENTS MEN

It's never a good thing when you almost catch an actor acting. In The Monuments Men, you catch the actors almost acting, and that's worse. George Clooney goes to Europe in search of art, and finds rather a lot of art in Europe, though you won't find much in his film. After a good half dozen scenes of multi-national men wandering around staring at sculptures and paintings, you realise that Clooney's just showing off. I suppose I would too, if I was that rich. In this tiresome exercise in filmmaking buffoonery (an appropriate reflection of the characters of his partly-fictionalised subjects), George abandons all the sense and sensitivity he has displayed as director of superior films in the vain search not of art, but of yet another Oscar or two. Desperation's not nearly as cool as he seems to believe it to be, and nor is blatancy, and far too many times do we almost catch Clooney directing. The smugness with which he operates here, bolstered by the presence of an insufferable ensemble of actors, turns this potentially diverting tale into a nauseating reverie for his facial features; worst of all is a hideous scene in which his character delivers a speech on the profundity of his mission that ought to go down as one of the most embarrassing instances of self-satisfaction in American film history (and you know it has some fierce competition). On the off-chance that you were unaware of the magnitude of Clooney's achievements here, the film is photographed in shades of sepia and shadow for ultimate gravitas, and then drowned out by an egregious musical score by none other than the wondrous Alexandre Desplat. Strains at comedy are underwritten and underperformed, and sit most uneasily with the otherwise grossly sincere tone Clooney adopts. The only decent parts all - literally, all - feature Cate Blanchett, whose character's story is far more interesting than that of these detestable men, and whose performance puts everyone else to utter shame. And you'll never catch her acting.