In 1997, when Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in Gus Van Sant’s “Good Will Hunting,” it immediately propelled the pair onto the ineffable Hollywood A-list. Both of them had been acting for several years and had participated in a few notable studio pictures, but it was “Good Will Hunting” that pushed the two handsome young blokes onto the top of the heap. Their film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (for Robin Williams). Ever since, both Affleck and Damon have remained above-the-title power players, appearing in a long list of both big-budget hits and ambitious indies.
Although, that’s not to say that they both haven’t had their share of stinkers. Affleck has starred in several notorious films in his career, including widely loathed films like “Gigli” and “Phantoms.” Although Affleck was the bomb in “Phantoms,” the film still bombed. And not all of Damon’s choices have been wise either. Although Don Bluth’s “Titan A.E.” is an entertaining animated yarn, the film was a massive bomb that lost about $100 million. Additionally, critics aren’t always fans of Damon’s films. His appearance in Terry Gilliam’s fantasy actioner “The Brothers Grimm” wasn’t exactly welcome, and no one seemed to be on the wavelength of Zhang Yimou’s “The Great Wall.” Also, be sure to look up what author John Christopher Farley had to say about Robert Redford’s cloying sports film “The Legend of Bagger Vance.”
But the two worst-reviewed films in Damon’s oeuvre — as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes — were the somewhat aimless takedown of 1950s suburban idylls “Suburbicon,” and the star-studded World War II art-retrieval drama “The Monuments Men.” The former has a critical approval rating of 27% and the latter 31%. The thing they have in common? Both films were directed by George Clooney.
George Clooney’s Suburbicon features one of Damon’s most boring performances
George Clooney’s 2017 film “Suburbicon” is set in 1959 in the fictional town of Suburbicon, an all-white American neighborhood inspired by Levittown, Pennsylvania. Damon plays an aggressively normal man named Gardner Lodge, who lives in bliss with his wife Rose (Julianne Moore) and his kids. One night, two home invaders break into the Lodge household and chloroform the family while they rob the place. Rose, however, is given too much of the chemical and she dies. The tragedy invites Rose’s twin sister Margaret (also Moore) to move in and aid in the mourning.
Margaret, however, begins dressing and speaking like Rose, and she begins sleeping with Garnder. Is the conformity of 1950s suburbia infecting her in some way? There is also an additional twist involving Gardner’s connection to the home invaders. And there are additional twists besides. All of the above drama plays out against a backdrop of racism. A Black family, the Mayers, have moved into the neighborhood, and the racist white residents of Suburbicon begin bullying them.
Only 27% of critics gave “Suburbicon” a pass, based on 256 reviews. Most of the reviews weren’t caustically negative, with most critics walking away merely feeling kind of “meh” about the film. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh of the Metro noted that the Black characters are given embarrassingly short shrift in a story that is underlined by racism. Anthony Lane, writing for the New Yorker, noted that Clooney had a few brief flourishes of creativity, but ultimately that the film was kind of generic. Overall, most critics agreed that Clooney’s film was heavy-handed and ineffectual. Even the charms and talents of stars like Damon and Moore couldn’t mitigate the film’s blandness.
The 27% approval rating doesn’t make it Damon’s worst film by a long stretch, but it is certainly one of the actor’s more boring efforts.
George Clooney’s The Monuments Men is too corny for its own good
The concept for Clooney’s 2014 film “The Monuments Men” is actually quite intriguing. It’s 1943 and the Allied forces are driving back the Nazis in Europe. There is some concern, however, that the Nazis have hidden or destroyed many of the great works of European art, so President Roosevelt assembles an Army unit tasked with locating and protecting paintings, music, sculptures, and architecture. Nicknamed the Monuments Men, the crack unit was composed of art historians, museum directors, and curators. They had to study on the fly, figuring out where great works of art had been located before the war in order to track where they might be now.
The cast of “The Monuments Men” is astonishing, including not just Damon and Clooney, but also Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, Bill Murry, Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin, and Hugh Bonneville. And while the thought of these actors kibitzing about the great art of Europe is a delicious idea — and one rooted in real-world history — Clooney’s direction is way too loose to make it interesting. It’s not a taut thriller about wartime outsiders, but a vaguely sentimental paean to art that’s about as deep as a greeting card.
Only 31% of the 258 critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave “The Monuments Men” a pass. Several critics pointed out the irony of a film hoping to vaunt the importance of great art should, in itself, be pretty crappy art. Like “Suburbicon,” the bulk of critics weren’t full of hate but merely dispassionate, citing the film’s corny sincerity and lack of sophistication. Andrew O’Hehir, writing for Salon, noted that “The Monuments Men” looked and felt like a dated 1970s TV movie more than a feature, and Matt Zoller Seitz, writing for RogerEbert.com, couldn’t find anything offensive, but neither could he find anything to love.
Clooney’s biggest weakness as a director, it seems, is his tendency toward bland simplicity.
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