Goats should not stare at this movie

By Alex Mugford

The Men Who Stare At Goats Starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey Maple Pictures 90 mins 14A

The Men Who Stare At Goats is one of the oddest movies of the year. What if the Jedi really existed? What if the government funded the “First Earth Battalion,” a secret organization to train Jedi knights in the United States Army? These psychic spies could turn invisible, pass through walls, bend metal with telekinesis, shoot astral projections, and kill goats by staring at them, to name a few. Leave it to America to be the first superpower to develop super powers. Suck it, Russia. The founder of the Battalion is Bill Django (Bridges), an ultra-hippy who wants to win war by, quite literally, giving the enemy a big fat hug. Instead of boot camp, the soldiers dance, do yoga, and meditate to hone their psychic skills. Lyn Cassady (Clooney) was the first soldier to develop the regrettable skill of killing an animal just by staring at it, thus giving birth to the dark side of the Battalion’s psycho-abilities. Larry Hooper (Spacey), another psychic spy and the Darth Vader equivalent in Goats, wants to exploit this ability, going against the fun-loving-hugs-for-all First Earth Battalion philosophy. The movie begins with a reporter, Bob Wilton (McGregor), meeting up with a retired Cassady, who is on a “mission” to find their missing founder and leader, Django, and to find out if the Battalion is really disbanded. Ewan McGregor and George Clooney’s characters make a surprisingly outstanding comic duo. It seems that ever since the Coen Brothers cast him as a moron in 2008’s Burn After Reading, he has found a new niche. Again, he plays the moron, which works well with McGregor’s ironic role. Clooney tries to educate McGregor on his psychic abilities making numerous references to Star Wars. Of course, McGregor played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, making the connection groovy for Star Wars fans. Jeff Bridges playing the burnt out Battalion leader is pretty much a no-brainer. All he had to do was channel “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski. One memorable scene involves him barking orders at his troops like a sergeant and then throwing in, “Nah, I’m just kiddin.’ What do you guys want to do? Dance?” And that’s exactly what they did. Kevin Spacey plays the bad guy which is fantastic. However, I didn’t get the sense that he was as evil as he should have been. The threat he presented was too small to be feared and it seemed like he didn’t have a chance at winning in the first place. This can be said for the entire movie in general. Goats features one of the best casts of the year. I mean, my god – Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor. It doesn’t get any better than that. While the cast is amazing, a lot more could have been squeezed out of them. As for the script, there is more humour in the material than they offer, but I guess that might be a flaw of Jon Ronson’s book of the same name, which inspired the film. It provoked a constant smile and a few chuckles, but being greedy, I wanted more from those four actors and the script and more blatant satire would have been enjoyed. I stick by my philosophy of “don’t hate a film for what it isn’t” and The Men Who Stare At Goats is still is a tremendous movie, although the plot and the characters fizzle into an unmemorable mish-mash of half-assed comedy near the end. A little more outrageousness and a stronger finale would have made this one of the best comedies of the year. 2.5 out of 4 stars

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