“Men Who Stare At Goats”
3 out of 5 stars
Stars: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
Director: Grant Heslov
Rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity.
Running time: 93 minutes
A funny thing happened on the way to Iraq … or did it? True or not, “The Men Who Stare At Goats” mashes up “Dr. Strangelove” and “X-Files” in an ideologically equitable ridicule of modern American credos. New Age spirituality, the gullible media, paranormal superstition, Reagan-Bush administration paranoia, military folly and war contractor corruption get skewered with wit.
In fact, everybody, from left and right, is a deluded nutburger here. Meanwhile, the rest of us can find a few laughs in a satiric indictment that’s entertaining in its oddness but slowly dissipates from a correspondingly odd — and uneven — story structure.
George Clooney produces and also portrays hilariously quirky retired Army Sgt. Lyn Cassady, the most supernaturally gifted prodigy of a secret unit of “Project Jedi” psychics who were supposedly assembled at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the 1980s. Ewan McGregor, forever known as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, signs up for the joke as susceptible investigative journalist Bob Wilton. His character stumbles on Lyn’s storied past and asks drolly, ironically, “Uh, what’s a Jedi?”
The tongue-in-cheek style of humor comes from today’s filmmaker, frequent Clooney collaborator Grant Heslov. He directs Peter Straughan’s embellished screenplay, which is credited as being “inspired by” reporter Jon Ronson’s eponymous 2004 book.
Lyn and Bob accidentally meet up in Kuwait in 2003. An emotionally lost Bob has been dumped by his wife and wants to cover the Iraqi war in order to impress her. Lyn is a contractor, about to enter the war zone for a mysterious black ops mission. He agrees to bring the naive Bob along. What ensues is their desert misadventure, interrupted by numerous expository flashbacks and lots of voiceover narration. They will reveal the clandestine (and wild) history of Project Jedi, its founding guru Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and its destructive renegade Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey, doing his usual villain thing).
With its peaceful dabbling in yoga, American Indian tradition, mind-expanding drug use and telepathy (to find lost soldiers), the unit’s special endowments first were intended for good. But when the past meets the present, all heck brakes loose in an inflated climax that is less amusing than the run-up to it.
Still, the performances are a hoot — especially from the mustachioed loon Clooney and Bridges, who resists the urge to overplay the ultimate oxymoron, a military hippie. They make it fun to get their “Goats.”
