Before I review the movie proper, some anachronisms: While there was a song called "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in 1944 (Judy Garland introduced it in Meet Me in St. Louis),the words Ms. Garland sang then were a little different from what we know today. Like, instead of "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" which was the line introed by Frank Sinatra in his 1957 recording, the line should have been "Until then, we'll have to muddle through sometime" which Judy sang in that movie I mentioned. Anyway, I very much enjoyed this dramatization of some art experts attempt to save as much of other countries' art from the Nazi regime as possible during World War II. Nice characterizations from Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, among others, and George Clooney who also did a nice job directing as well. Maybe there could have been a bit more drama in characterization but I was satisfied with what I got. There were some nice humorous scenes as well. So on that note, I recommend The Monuments Men.

This film is definitely not terrible but missed a big opportunity at making something memorable. And needless to say it unfortunately has a lot of problems that do it (and its intriguing story) a huge disservice. Before listing the problems I will note its positives: The acting, cast, direction and visuals are all good. OK...

And now the problems:

1) The quips and zingers every few minutes: Is this a sit-com or a drama about Nazis stealing art? It was hard enough to believe any of these characters are allowed to simply meander around Europe without strict supervision but even less believable that these men snap out witty one- liners back and forth after every few minutes. And the problem is that these one-liners are often during times of implied danger or tension, which gets broken immediately with the comedy relief.

2) The musical score/tone is absolutely bizarre and out-of-place in many areas: When taking on a subject as serious as WW2, it's not a great idea to constantly have happy-go-lucky comedy relief music going on in the background. It really is tonally all over the place and is out of place when considering the message trying to be sent about the importance of human art/culture, etc. Half the time I was expecting either a Broadway musical dance-line to jump out and start kicking their legs in front of the screen or at least see the Rocketeer fly past a Nazi blimp.

3) The one dimensional characters. We learn very little about the actual personalities of the main characters so there is little to invest in, especially between the characters and their relationships. It's hard to feel bad for characters who you don't know and are acting really stupid in very dangerous circumstances. I also felt there were many scenes missing from the film because we never see the main characters even bond or have much meaningful dialog within the first hour of the film, and are expected to cry for characters we do not know and expected to care about relationships we have not established.

4) The villains (are even worse:) The bad guys (Nazis of course) might as well have been twirling around their mustaches and laughing maniacally. Are we to believe that even the "bad guys" in a real historical situation did not have other emotions besides crazy and evil? And as if if the Nazis were not bad enough villains, the writers needed to include a sub-plot with the big bad Russians, who although helped us beat the Nazis, are apparently evil for wanting to take art for themselves, I guess.

5) Missed opportunities: Many scenes have a lot of potential to lead up to something interesting, intense, or memorable. They never deliver in any way, however. Every single moment where there is action,drama, or a threat of danger/death, it is resolved with some type of comic relief or very random exposition designed to move to the next scene as quickly as possible. Very sad to say because every scene starts out with promise, then fails.

6) The heroes/the Title: Not even sure about the accuracy of this film: But if true, the heroes are not even the Monuments Men, but the ONE German-speaking member (hired on a fluke) who figured out where the art was being hidden and the same guy also finds hidden Nazi gold. It should have been named after this one character, the other members are idiots. Any man who steps out of a vehicle in war-torn France to offer a cigarette to a horse, deserves to be shot.

7) The WW2 tropes cliché festival: Yet again another movie showing the "greatest hits" of WW2, relying on its audience to be a bunch of stupid simpletons who only respond to iconic images or names they know from grade school text books. "OH, OMAHA BEACH! OH, BATTLE OF THE BULGE! OH, SCOWLING Hitler! OH PICASSO! THIS ALL MEANS SOMETHING!" .. No, it's time to stop going for the low hanging fruit and bring something unique.

8) "If it weren't for us you'd be speaking German" ... This is an actual line from the movie, directed at a French woman from an American soldier. The problem is that only a few scenes before we see a German Nazi soldier speaking English to that very French woman. So apparently she would have been speaking neither German or French, she'd be speaking English so that the English-speaking audience wouldn't have to read subtitles. Ridiculous jingoistic quips would work fine in a more clever WW2 film, but definitely not this one.

9) Last but not least: George Clooney as Danny Ocean/Prince Charming/Hero Astronaut:

I cannot take him seriously in a WW2 film when he does the whole "I'm not just a pretty face" smooth talking nonsense. In an Ocean's 11 film, yes. He's a good actor, why did he choose to play it like this AGAIN? It's annoying and takes us out of the movie, especially when trying to believe him as a humble hero who cares about art and not just how cool he is.

As I watched "The Monuments Men", I kept finding myself wondering why the heck this film has an incredibly mediocre score of only 6.1 currently on IMDB. I am not sure why, but I can only assume most viewers simply didn't care about the work these soldiers did. But the quality of the production and fine acting SHOULD have guaranteed a score much higher even if folks didn't care so much about art.

The film was obviously a work of love by George Clooney and the rest. After all, a lot of work went into making the movie...such as getting WWII era aircraft, trucks, tanks, uniforms...as well as the art (which I assume were all reproductions). This took a LOT of work! I was also surprised because many modern films about WWII show equipment that isn't quite right...such as American vehicles pretending to be German or tanks which are Korean War era. But here in "The Monuments Men", they really took the steps necessary to get it right.

Now not everything in the film was perfect....and I assumed that this was done in order to streamline the movie. So, instead of 8 or so members of this group dedicated to saving and repatriating stolen artwork, there really were many more...perhaps a few hundred. But again, I think this was deliberately done to make the film seem more personal. Overall, a well crafted and fine film...one of the best of 2014.

By the way, if you want to learn more about this, try watching the documentary "The Rape of Europa".