The Monuments Men
Columbia Pictures | Release Date: February 7, 2014 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
15
Mixed:
27
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
ObserverRex ReedFeb 5, 2014
This is their story. It is true. It is history. As a film, it is riveting, suspenseful, harrowing and exciting, and somehow, it also manages to be something rare among war pictures—a big-scale entertainment. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 6, 2014
The film depicts a treasure hunt, only in the sense that the movie has to have a running story. But it doesn't really trade on suspense or adventure, and in the few places Clooney pushes it that way, it doesn't feel right. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickFeb 6, 2014
Except possibly for a superlative supporting performance by Hugh Bonneville of “Downton Abbey,’’ Clooney’s low-key directorial effort is not quite an Oscar-caliber movie, though it’s got a great cast, a worthy theme and plenty of things to reward adult moviegoers. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanFeb 6, 2014
If you’re worried that the re-teaming of Clooney and Cate Blanchett in a World War II movie signals something like “The Good German,” fear not: She’s better here, playing a French art historian who worries the Americans will “rescue” the art in order to steal it for their own country. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 4, 2014
This is a solid albeit slow-building film with few dull moments. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 31, 2014
Who knew? The work of the Monuments Men is fresh territory for film, and Clooney builds the story with intriguing detail and scope. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissFeb 6, 2014
Rather than juicing each element to blockbuster volume, Clooney has delivered it in the tone of a memorial lecture, warm and ambling, given by one of the distinguished academics he put in his movie. Read full review
70
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekFeb 4, 2014
The Monuments Men fails in its grand ambitions, but it's still satisfying in bits and pieces, like a busted statue. Even a tribute made of shining fragments counts for something. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinFeb 3, 2014
It’s a graceful, engaging film — I enjoyed it. But it could have been called "The Tasteful Dozen." Read full review
67
The PlaylistDrew TaylorJan 29, 2014
Turns out it was even trickier than originally imagined and that for all of its best efforts, The Monuments Men remains an unwieldy, overtly sentimental (but still emotionally distant) epic. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 8, 2014
Certainly, the story told by The Monuments Men is worth telling and it's easy to see why a luminary like Clooney would be sufficiently attracted to want to direct it. Unfortunately, this treatment, written by Clooney and long-time collaborator Grant Heslov, isn't the best fit. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 7, 2014
The Monuments Men often lets the schematic gears show, succumbing to threadbare formula and sentimental cliches rather than taut, sophisticated drama. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzFeb 7, 2014
Heart alone does not a good film make. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsFeb 6, 2014
It’s admirable, but Monuments Men just poses on a porous foundation like a statue. Read full review
63
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreFeb 4, 2014
Clooney, for the first time in his directing career (“Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Ides of March”) never finds the sweet spot, and never quite wrestled the script into a shape entertaining enough to make the liberties he and Heslov took with the facts worth it. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierFeb 6, 2014
There’s great repartee between its cast of this “based on a true [but forgotten] story” of World War II. Yet the film overall isn’t colorful enough. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzFeb 5, 2014
It comes down to a matter of tone, and Clooney can’t really settle on one. The Monuments Men is in no way a bad movie. Just, with this bunch, a disappointing one. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith UhlichJan 29, 2014
Clooney occasionally shows a surer hand: He gets great work from Downton Abbey’s Bonneville — notably in an emotionally charged scene revolving around Michelangelo’s Madonna of Bruges — and has a fine monologue himself, in which Stokes dresses down a high-ranking German commander (a moving encapsulation of the American spirit at its best). Read full review
59
Film.comWilliam GossFeb 7, 2014
Monuments certainly isn’t unbearable to watch, but for all its quality pedigree and good intentions, the result is a frustratingly flat film that drifts from moment to moment with a curious lack of urgency and an overbearing sense of self-importance. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallFeb 6, 2014
Mostly it's hamstrung by an abundance of reverence and dialogue sounding like an art studies syllabus when it isn't rehashing war movie tropes. Read full review
58
IndieWireEric KohnFeb 4, 2014
Smothered by its lighthearted approach, The Monuments Men attempts to make a grand statement about the valiance of dying for the sake of art, but fails to create it. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaFeb 7, 2014
Alas, it's a throwback that's thrown its back out - limping along, trailed by battalions of stereotypes and ammo rounds of cliche. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyFeb 6, 2014
By the film’s end, one can’t help thinking that the story would be better served by a well-researched documentary on the real-life MFAA division (monuments, fine arts and archives.) Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigFeb 6, 2014
Genial and well-intentioned, but tepid. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 6, 2014
It can be nice to spend time with these actors even when you don’t believe their characters for a single second, and there’s no denying this movie’s easy pleasures... Yet because Mr. Clooney can’t figure out what kind of story this is, he too often slips into pandering mode. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrFeb 6, 2014
It’s a great story, and much of it’s true. This should work like a pip. Instead, The Monuments Men is a tonal mishmash: Half “Hogan’s Post-Doctoral Heroes,” half “Saving Private Rembrandt,” and half “Ingres’s 11.” That’s three halves, so you can see the problem. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezFeb 6, 2014
In The Monuments Men, director George Clooney takes a wild, stranger-than-fiction true story and turns it into a dull, prestigious slog. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoFeb 6, 2014
George Clooney's film boils a big, messy maelstrom of theft and uncertainty down to a digestible, faintly appetizing mush. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Feb 5, 2014
The Monuments Men feels not just self-conscious but also a bit self-congratulatory, its creator squashing the spirit of adventure with too many grandiose lines about the Importance Of Art. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackFeb 5, 2014
Ultimately, however, this film is a collection of vignettes in search of a narrative center. Although it’s enjoyable, the film never coheres into a whole. Instead, it resembles a pile of ill-fitting jigsaw-puzzle pieces rather than a fully formed picture. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 5, 2014
Clooney's attempt to honor unsung real-life heroes while recapturing the ensemble pleasures of some well-remembered Hollywood war pictures, notably "The Great Escape" and "The Guns of Navarone," comes off as a modestly accomplished forgery at best. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 29, 2014
Something less than monumental, The Monuments Men wears its noble purpose on its sleeve when either greater grit or more irreverence could have put the same tale across to modern audiences with more punch and no loss of import. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 7, 2014
It’s like an over-the-hill gang variant on “The Dirty Dozen,” except not as much fun as that sounds. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianMarc MohanFeb 6, 2014
The story of the rescue of these priceless artifacts is absolutely worthy of as much attention as Hollywood can provide. But by the final, self-congratulatory, groan-inducing scene, it's more than clear that this telling of it is a monumental mess. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanFeb 5, 2014
The Monuments Men sounds like a what's-not-to-like? movie, but it turns out to be a bizarre failure. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 18, 2014
The problem isn't a lack of weight, but of lightness. It's stuck with lead feet for a historical caper and serves no other worthwhile purpose. Read full review
40
Total FilmPaul BradshawFeb 18, 2014
An amazing story and an amazing cast don’t always make an amazing film. Too light for drama, not funny enough for comedy; it’s unlikely anyone will ever risk their lives for this. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottFeb 7, 2014
All aspects of this great story are drawn toward the middle ground of mediocrity. Read full review
40
NPRBob MondelloFeb 7, 2014
There's lots of information, some nice images, plenty of earnest sermonizing about culture and almost no suspense, or tension, or character development, or structure. Or, well, art. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranFeb 6, 2014
It can't decide what kind of a film it wants to be and so ends up failing across a fairly wide spectrum. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFeb 6, 2014
The movie's tone is at war with its subject, and sometimes with its wavering self. Read full review
40
The DissolveNathan RabinFeb 6, 2014
While the film is often playful, it never attempts to be particularly funny, perhaps out of a fear that too much levity in a World War II-themed movie would be in poor taste. Instead, it loads on great quantities of tacky crowd-pleasing moments and clichés. Read full review
30
VarietyScott FoundasJan 29, 2014
Clooney has transformed a fascinating true-life tale into an exceedingly dull and dreary caper pic cum art-appreciation seminar — a museum-piece movie about museum people. Read full review
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