The Men Who Stare at Goats Movie Review

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Movie Review

I am rarely tricked by trailers, which, apart from being the worst superhero power of all time, is also a handy money-saving device when deciding which films to go see. So, when I saw a snippet of The Men Who Stare at Goats about two months ago, I was quietly delighted, because it looked like it contained all the elements necessary to make a good film. Oh, how wrong I was. The trailer for this piece of foulness was my shiny green kryptonite.

I read Jon Ronson's book – on which the movie is based – a few years back, and really enjoyed it, although never did I think that it had any hope of becoming a feature property, mostly because of its documentary style. The book concerns Ronson's efforts to find out more about a section of the U.S. army which were in training to use highly specialised and exceedingly secret parapsychological skills, such as – I s&*% you not - invisibility and walking through walls. You can see where this is going; Ronson spent a great deal of The Men Who Stare at Goats presenting an army unit which was misguided at best, at worst insane. The title comes from what the soldiers – who call themselves Jedi warriors - did in an attempt to try to stop the hearts of what must have been some very confused animals.

The movie essentially steals the premise of the book and throws in a plotline in which a reporter (Ewan McGregor) goes to Kuwait during the Gulf War, where he bumps into a Jedi warrior (George Clooney), who takes him into occupied territory. And then hilarity ensues, right?

Not exactly. What unfolds over the course of the film's extremely long-feeling 90 minute runtime is a string of pratfalls, sight gags and verbal jokes so hackneyed and unfunny that they would make the orangutan from Dunston Checks In blush. This movie is a textbook case of stocking the trailer with all the best bits; blatently misleading advertising. God knows how the producers of this movie managed to convince stars like Kevin Spacey and George Clooney to sign on, but I wish that I had their powers of persuasion if nothing else.

On the cast; I don't know whether the director knew who Ewan McGregor was before, after, or during the film, but he had quite a prominent role in the prequels to a moderately successful franchise known as Star Wars. I couldn't work out whether the writers – by including frequent mentions of Jedi warriors - were just beating the joke to death, or if they just couldn't be bothered to change dialogue once McGregor became attached to the project. The first time Jedi was mentioned, there was a nice ripple of laughter in the audience, and I found myself grinning, but a joke like that grates so easily and by the fourth time around I began to anticipate it as much as nails on a black board.

Jeff Bridges also deserves dishonourable mention, playing Bill Django, founder of the New Earth army. His role is basically a badly written version of The Dude from The Big Lebowski, and I was quite hoping his eventual death would be a lot more graphic.

Do yourself a favour; use your powers of mental persuasion to convince yourself that this movie was never made. And if you want to see the American military being made fun of, watch Dr. Strangelove.

1.5/10