John Goodman Thinks He Shouldn't Have Starred In George Clooney's 2014 Critical Flop

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George Clooney enjoys a heightened status in Hollywood. He is one of the most handsome and charismatic movie stars in the history of the medium, and he relishes the opportunity to make a total fool out of himself (especially if he's working for Joel and Ethan Coen). For a moment, his instincts were unerring. On the strength of "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," those instincts seemed to extend to directing. His next two directorial efforts, "Leatherheads" and "The Ides of March," were solid, but they lacked the snap of his early work. Then he just up and lost it.

Clooney's last five movies — "The Monuments Men," "Suburbicon," "The Midnight Sky," "The Tender Bar" and "The Boys in the Boat" — are bizarrely inert. I revere Clooney as an actor (I wrote a book about him), and, via interviews with people who know him well, believe that he cares deeply about his art. But there's no passion in those aforementioned movies. They're smart, considered, compassionate works, but they've got a blasé point of view. Clooney admirably promotes a humanistic point of view, but there's no technical or intellectual rigor behind his efforts. It's like watching LeBron James make layups.

I hate writing this stuff because I know Clooney has it in him to make great films. But when I run into a series of comments from a serious actor like John Goodman about how he spent months working on "The Monuments Men" with Clooney, only to walk away wishing he hadn't made the movie, I wonder where it all went wrong. While Goodman admittedly had a good time making the film, he also confessed, "It was one of those movies ... I probably shouldn't have done."

During a recent SAG-AFTRA Foundation Q&A, Goodman dished on two films that, in his estimation, he shouldn't have done. One was John Landis' reviled "Saturday Night Live" movie sequel "Blues Brothers 2000," which at least gave the rhythm and blues aficionado the opportunity to work with music legends like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and B.B. King. He didn't mention Landis' involvement in the deaths of Vic Morrow, Myca Dinh Le, and Renee Shin-Ye Lee on the set of "Twilight Zone: The Movie," but people were still making films with the director at the time.

The other was "The Monuments Men" with Clooney. According to Goodman, "George loves movies and he loves stories and he's such a great storyteller himself, and I think he's a great director. I had fun with him. 'Monuments Men.' We were over in Germany for six months. And England." 

But the film about art experts being dropped into Europe during World War II to save the continent's cultural treasures was DOA critically and commercially. It's a handsomely mounted would-be epic, but the theme is clearly stated early on, which leaves Clooney nowhere to go narratively. Protecting art, reinforcing its importance in the middle of a war that threatens to end civilization, is a wildly worthwhile premise. Especially now. I just wish Clooney and co-screenwriter Grant Heslov hadn't taken a softball approach to this subject. We need a guy like Clooney hurling heat.