Bury every copy of Monuments Men in mines across Europe, so George Clooney can try again

You know that old quip ‘I’m not just a pretty face’? I always thought it was meant to be said tongue-in-cheek, with an undertone of self-deprecation. Surely it’s not for those literal instances when a really beautiful person does something really, really smart. It’s for when those of us on the middle-to-lower rungs of the loveliness ladder have flashes of minor inspiration. And so, ‘I’m not just a pretty face.’ Like a joke. Hahahahaha.

But what would it mean if George Clooney — ol’ salt-and-pepper-spit-curl George — said ‘I’m not just a pretty face’? The reason I ask is that he, or at least the character he’s playing, does just that in his latest film The Monuments Men. We already know that Clooney’s Frank Stokes is smart because he’s an art historian. We already know that he’s handsome because he’s played by George Clooney. But then he has to go and say it, after building a radio out of scrap: ‘I’m not just a pretty face.’