The Monuments Men: Bland

118mins | Biography | 2014 

A complete mess of a film due to reasons that kill me and make me cry.

The story behind Monuments is a beautiful one. A group put together to rescue art stolen by the Nazis in World War II. I myself like this story unlike a lot of people online who apparently think its no worth tell. I think it’s one of importance and therefore one that should be told, just not in a theater.

My biggest issue with this film is the amount to be told and not enough time to tell it. Sure 118mins is long enough for most stories but not this one. What they tried to do was fit 10 lb of shit in a 5 lb bag.   This would of worked better as an episodic show on HBO, History Channel or whatever. A 10-part show, 1hr long would be more then enough, not 118mins.

Sadly with the 118mins that they had they wasted it on scenes that didn’t need to be in there. Also having a cast of 7 well-known actors sharing the screen caused issues with time. The amount of unneeded scenes and the editing back and forth of current scenes killed me. Even the camera work and blocking just seemed off, I thought in the theater that this felt very amateurish filmmaking. So much could have been reworked and cleaned up; even the jokes seemed really dare I say it, lame.

So much of this film seemed wasted, and yet I wanted more after it was over.

I wanted to like this film a lot. I adore the time period, the actors and in general filmmaking and at the end I just had a, Whatever vibe. That’s not what I wanted, and that’s not what I expected.

It’s disappointing and I expected better from this company of men.