Thankfully, very little of this movie is spent actually watching men stare at goats. Unfortunately, the result is something only marginally more exciting.
The Men Who Stare At Goats is (or at least I assume it supposed to be) a comedy, starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. The films starts with a title card reading "More of this is true than you would believe..." And indeed, if any of it is true, then reality is pretty ridiculous.
McGregor plays hapless yes likable reporter Bob Wilton, who journeys to Iraq to pursue "the romance of war" after the romance of his own marriage fails. He thinks he's stumbled upon the story of a lifetime when he meets Lyn Cassidy (Clooney), a seemingly crazy special agent on an unknown mission. Lyn was once a soldier in the now defunct U.S. New Earth Army, an obscure unit employed to practice and conduct experiments in psychic and paranormal warfare, run by the ex-army-officer-turned-hippie Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). The driving motivation behind the project was to outdo Russia by becoming "the first superpower to create super powers."
After being introduced to just what exactly "psychic and paranormal warfare" entails (absurd activities such as "cloud bursting" and "remote viewing"), Bob decides to follow Lyn on whatever his mission may be. The two travel through the desert and experience a series of mishaps, before eventually ending up at a secret U.S. Army base run by a former New Earth Army defector, the "villain" Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who now conducts his own psychic research. Some goats are set free, some prisoners liberated, LSD is smoked/inhaled/consumed, or whatever it is you do with LSD, and that pretty much wraps it up.
Summary aside, this movie elicited no strong feelings in me one way or the other. I had the vague sense that it was supposed to be funnier than it was, and I'm left sitting here three days later trying with difficulty to remember anything much about the movie at all. The acting was obviously excellent, as you would expect from such an exceptional cast. I especially want to call attention to the performance of McGregor, who has mastered that rare skill of playing a character thoroughly, charmingly, and competently, but still knows when to step back and let someone else control the scene.
I think this film’s biggest problem is that it never decided quite what it wanted to be, tone-wise. It wasn't funny enough to succeed as a comedy alone, nor was there enough political commentary or judgment to succeed as a satire. There were fleeting moments of the absurdity and whimsy that makes some Wes Anderson films such a delight, but as they were just moments, I never felt sufficiently charmed. I'm sure there are those who interpreted what I've diagnosed as "lack of tonal commitment" as sophisticated and subtle humor, and thus greatly enjoyed this film. But there are also those who hated (I know because I’ve talked to them and they’ve been very vocal about it).
As for myself, I neither hated nor loved this film. There were some genuinely funny parts, but not nearly enough for me to recommend this movie or make me want to watch it again. If someone asks me if they should check it out, I'll ask them what their other options are: if it's between watching The Men Who Stare At Goats and going for a walk or reading a book, I'd say the latter, but if it's between watching this movie or oh, say, watching Avatar, then I'd say this movie will not only be well worth your time but also seem like the Greatest Story Ever Told in comparison.
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