'Monuments Men' made me want to punch film critics very hard right in the nose.

[Hissyspit]

36. 'I’ve substituted the word “puppies” for art.'

http://www.artsjournal.com/realcleararts/2014/02/the-best-artistic-response-to-monuments-men.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/george-clooney-saves-puppies-from-nazis/2014/02/06/d9e5a218-8a8e-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html

If you care about art, you are obliged to loathe the film “The Monuments Men,” a star-studded history drama that purports to tell the story of American efforts to rescue and repatriate art stolen by the Nazis in World War II. The film doesn’t lapse occasionally into cliché, it is grounded in cliché, woven of cliché and consists of nothing but cliché. Director, producer and screenplay co-author George Clooney may believe he is serving art, but “Monuments Men” serves only cliché, and cliché is the enemy of art.

“Monuments Men” is so bad I will save you the trouble and expense of seeing it with the following summary. To make the film a bit more coherent, I’ve substituted the word “puppies” for art.

Over in Europe, the Second World War is raging, and Clooney is very worried about the puppies. He takes this concern directly to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom we recognize from the jaunty angle of his cigarette holder. He explains to the President of the United States the basics of the allied invasion of Germany. He uses a big map with arrows on it, with the Russians coming in from the east, and the allies moving in from France and Italy. Caught in the middle of these armies are a whole lot of puppies. Clooney says he doesn’t want to live in a world without puppies.

Roosevelt tells Clooney to go save the puppies and there ensue several derivative scenes in which Clooney rounds up a rag-tag gang of misfit puppy lovers who all agree to help him return the puppies to their rightful owners. But when they finally arrive on the beaches of Normandy, a grizzled commander scorns their noble puppy quest, with a speech that goes something like this: “There’s a war on out there and boys are dying, and I’ll be damned if I have to write one more letter to one more mother telling her that her boy died to save some damn puppies.”

This isn’t going to be easy, but nothing worth doing ever is. There follows a lot more derivative material, with some stock buddy-film comic scenes thrown in, and some stock bathos scenes of young men dying. There are two particularly cute puppies who help structure the rest of the film, and — spoiler alert — Germany loses the war and both puppies are rescued just in time from the mean old Russians who, when it comes to puppies, are almost as bad as the Germans.