The Men Who Stare at Goats

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" is a comedy (and kind of a war movie...) directed by Grant Heslov (he wrote 2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck" which was directed by and co-starred George Clooney) The cast includes George Clooney ("Michael Clayton"), Jeff Bridges ("The Big Lebowski"), Ewan McGregor (the new "Star Wars" movies), and Kevin Spacey ("American Beauty"). It also has Stephen Root ("Office Space" and TV's "NewsRadio") in a small part at the beginning of the movie...which is great because I love when Stephen Root randomly shows up in things.

According to the beginning of the movie, "More of this is true than you'd believe"...hmm, we'll see about that. The movie centers on members of an elite military group that wants to stop war as it is conventionally done. They use their minds (rumor has it that they are psychic...a man killed a goat with his mind...so the logical next step is to now fight wars with the mind instead of weapons...) Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is the reporter to investigate this phenomenon. His wife has left him so he goes to Iraq to investigate his story, spending some quality time with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney)...the man who said is to have killed the aforementioned goat. Also included in the psychic fun are Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who is a leader of sorts...who reminded me of "The Dude" from 'The Big Lebowski" and Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) who just kind of hates everyone.

The cast of the movie is great. George Clooney plays the lead character well...he's one of the best lead actors currently in Hollywood...and I'm sure his paycheck would back me up on that last statement. He had great chemistry with Ewan McGregor. This works out nicely since the the two have some intense bonding time in the desert and just about everywhere else. Jeff Bridges seems to be right at home playing a character that may or may not be all there (his character in the movie has taken tons of drugs...so he most likely is in fact not all there...but then again just about every character in the movie was at under the influence of at least a little LSD). And um...Kevin Spacey was quite the jerk in this movie, but he plays it well...so that's a success as well.

Well, this movie does take place during war time, but I'm pretty sure there was no serious parts to it...accept possibly one. Whereas "M*A*S*H" was able to be the perfect mix of comedy and drama, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" leans heavily to the comedy side of things - which is not a bad thing...I just feel like there could have been more jokes in the movie. What is there is usually funny (although a couple scenes were strange and unnecessary) so the actors were not wasted...like in "Year One"...and to a lesser extent "The Invention of Lying" and I did enjoy it more than "Funny People"...I watch a movie with the word "funny" in the title and for some reason I actually want it to be funny...but most of the funny parts in "The Men Who Stare at Goats" were in the trailer, which usually isn't a great sign. But I happened to love the trailer so the darn script writers should have tried a little harder.

The movie's pretty short so it doesn't get boring or drawn out...ahhh, like "Funny People"...comedies should never be 12 hours long...

So the movie was pretty good...nowhere near the quality of "A Serious Man"...because the Coen brothers are ridiculous and have to physically try to not make a great movie. But that kind of quality is hard to come by in the time where smart comedies are usually not made - must take too make effort. 2 1/2 out of 4 stars...and if my reviews are too long and people just skip to the rating - which is possibly because I just type for a while and see what comes out - here's the condensed version. Great Cast. Could have used more jokes. Better than a certain movie that I hate and have already mentioned twice in this review ("Year One"), but not as good as another that I also mentioned and love so much ("A Serious Man").

-Joseph Sbrilli