A war satire woefully short on laughs, The Men Who Stare At Goats is about precisely nothing – other than
stars desperately trying to energize humorless material – until its concluding
moments, at which point it futilely attempts to make a statement about the need
for innovative, non-violent dreamers in our current war-entrenched country.
Directed by Grant Heslov and starring his Good
Night, and Good Luck partner George Clooney, this feeble farce concerns a
reporter (Ewan McGregor) who, while struggling to gain entrance into Iraq in
2003 (to prove to his unfaithful wife that he’s a man) finds himself at the
side of a lunatic (Clooney) who claims to have been part of a top-secret
military operation from decades earlier that turned soldiers into psychic
warriors. These self-described “Jedis” were created by an army hippie (Jeff
Bridges) convinced that using one’s mind rather than bullets was the path to
true success, a bit of heavy-handed allegorical mush that Heslov, working from
Peter Straughan’s lethargic script (based on Jon Ronson’s book), makes neither
funny nor insightful. Given the talent participating (which also includes Kevin
Spacey as a rival of Clooney’s), Goats
should be expected to elicit at least a few chuckles or sparks of genuine
drama. Alas, as it flip-flops between Clooney and McGregor’s escapades in the
Iraqi desert and flashbacks to new-agey drug-ins and goofy extrasensory
experiments conducted on military bases, the film – amounting to a series of
barely tethered surrealistic shenanigans perpetrated by coasting A-listers – finds
neither a rhythm nor a purpose.
Comments