The Men who Stare at Goats

Yes, it might be one of the dumbest titled movies, ever, but it actually fits the movie perfectly. With a cast like George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey, is it possible to lose? Of course, that is a silly question because great casts are wasted on movies all of the time, but there was something about how this looked, that made it seem like a can't miss. The actors seems tailor made for these roles. They played to the strengths of the individuals, well except McGregor's American Accent, but in a way, it is charming for a movie like this. I feel like the last part of 200 belongs to Clooney with this, Up in the Air and The Fantastic Mr. Fox. He has a nice trifecta, and this was the first of the 3 to see release. I was pretty stoked.

Bob Wilton(McGregor) is a low level reporter for a little paper in Michigan and he gets sent to interview a man who believes he has super powers. Wilton does not really believe the story this man tells, which is that The Military, in the 1980s, trained a whole force of psychic soldiers to get rid of the need for weapons and killing. Wilton kind of files it away, but when he gets a divorce, he decides he needs adventure and goes off to Iraq to cover the war for his paper. he is attempting to show his ex-wife that he is important. Things do not exactly go his way at first, but soon he meets Lyn Cassady(Clooney), who the man in Michigan told Bob about. Quickly, Cassady lays out the whole thing for Wilton. it turns out, yes The Military did spend the 1980s creating psychic soldiers. They could see things as they were happening. They could see the future, they were in touch with the spiritual. Cassady tells Wilton he is on a mission and that Wilton is to go with him because of a drawing Wilton made, that looked like Cassady's tattoo. It must be fate.

The movie operates in two time periods. We get the current stuff with Wilton and Cassady, but Cassady is also relaying the story of the psychic soldiers' beginnings, so the movie takes detours to the late 1970s and the 1980s. Founded by Bill Djanjo(Bridges), the psychic unit does not operate like anyone else. They dance (one of the funniest scenes), and they are completely separate from the rest of the Military. Everything was going well until Larry Hooper(Spacey) comes along and tries to change things. he usurps Djanjo's authority and believes that these psychic soldiers can use their powers to kill. To prove this, Hooper orders Cassady to kill a goat with his mind. Cassady does it and that is where he felt things started to go all wrong. He used "The Force" for evil and went to the dark side. yes, there are numerous Star Trek references throughout.

Balancing the pure silly with a message is tough and The Men who Stare at Goats does not always hit the mark. Oh it is hilarious. Clooney with long hair dancing around, or staring at goats, or any number of goofy 1980s stuff is classic and Jeff Bridges is in total "The Dude" mode with his line delivery and his entire body. Those two play really well off of each other. Other jokes involve Clooney's character cooking dinner on a solar panel, but it gets dark before he finishes and Ewan has all kinds of funny Jedi lines that only work because, well he was Obi-Won. Kevin Spacey is perfectly snarky throughout and then he gets the big laughs towards the end of the film. Clooney and McGregor have a lot of fun playing off of each other and in the "road trip" style section of the film, they get a lot of laughs, especially after they have been captured and Clooney is trying to explain how being a psychic soldier works he has McGregor attack him.

The problem with The Men who Stare at Goats, is that it runs out of gas. I feel like the movie began without a climax or ending in mind and they kind of made it up as they went along. The big finale takes place with all of the main characters meeting back up for the first time in 20 years or so and Clooney's character feels like he is dying from cancer, Bridges' is a drunk and Spacey is Bridges' boss. The climax involves a massive helping of L.S.D. and has a Timothy Leery joke (seriously?!?!). I think there are people who probably found it to be pretty hilarious, but other than Spacey's L.S.D inspired trip, I did not find any of it particularly funny. I think I was just kind of over the whole thing at this point in the movie.

The Men who Stare at Goats provided me with plenty of laughs for the first hour, but as it kept going, I just got over it all. The performances are all good and everyone is clearly having a grand ole time in this liberal minded war movie and that is always fun to see, but I think I was hoping for something a little more. I like the silly humor, but I guess I was hoping for something more biting, or something that fully embraced the silly without try for some sort of anti-violence message. I guess the movie just tried too hard to be two things at one time and because of it, they both suffered a bit too much in the end.

Final Grade: C+