By Matthew Jackson
For its title alone, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is worth seeing. Not that I’m one for judging books by their cover or movies by their poster, but you’ve got to be intrigued by a lead-in like that.
The good news is that there’s oh so much more that makes the flick worth your while. It’s got everything a quirky buddy comedy needs: explosions, guns, weird jokes, drug-induced laughter, goats, mind powers and Kevin Spacey. What’s not to love?
Ewan McGregor stars as Bob Wilton, a Michigan journalist who hears an unusual story from a presumed yahoo in his town. The yahoo (Stephen Root) tells Wilton that he was once a member of an elite group of soldiers in a top secret unit known only as the “Jedis” (yes, like in “Star Wars”), psychic soldiers with amazing powers. While relating this story, the yahoo drops a name, “Lyn Cassady.”
Cut to a couple of years later. Wilton’s wife has left him for his editor, and in a desperate effort to both get her back and feel like he’s achieved something, he jets off to Kuwait to cover the Iraq War (we’re set in 2003 here, so it’s just starting). There he meets the real Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who proceeds to tell him that all the stories he heard about the Jedis are true, and there are so many more.
In between sharing tales of his ability to stop a goat’s heart and his penchant for listening to Boston to warm up his brain powers, Cassady reveals to Wilton that he’s on a top secret mission, and that he must get into Iraq. Intrigued and a little bit bewildered, Wilton tags along.
As the two embark on a journey through the desert, where they encounter kidnappers, explosives and various other Iraqi dangers, we shift back in time to reveal the beginning of the Jedis, officially known in the military as the “New Earth Army.” Its founder was a man named Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a military man who went out into the world and experienced every kind of hippie logic the New Age had to offer before returning to the Army and devising a plan to train special warriors with telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Cassady is among the first he recruits. As the adventure in present day continues, glimpses of the past reveal the rise and fall of the unit, the fall being largely attributed to a jealous Jedi named Larry Hooper (Spacey).
I’m stopping there. For the mission’s bizarre details, and how the past and the present link together in the end, you’ll have to go watch.
To start with, the flick is funny, really funny, but funny in a way that’s completely unpredictable. Comedies follow formulas. They make fun of love, the make fun of idiots, they make fun of politicians. This comedy breaks all the rules, delivering quirky gags left and right that seem to often fly out of nowhere. The chaos of the jokes is such that it almost mirrors the chaos of the war, which is in no way a bad thing.
The cast is ... well, you saw the names I mentioned. McGregor is the consummate straight man while still managing to give a sense of deep misery lurking just beneath the surface. Clooney revels in the madness of Cassady, stepping out of his comfort zone of cool into something weird and wild. Spacey is his usual brilliant self, and Bridges brings it all home, channeling some of his work as “The Dude” in “The Big Lebowski” to make the hippie magic of Django sparkle.
The film’s one major flaw lies in its pace. Actor-turned-director Grant Heslov does wonders with the film as it begins, but as we near its conclusion things start to unravel. The film is chaotic anyway, but somewhere in the mix of trying to make it funny and exciting and moving all at once, something gets lost.
That aside, the film more than lives up to its title. It’s funny, it’s bizarre, it’s epic and it’s downright fun to watch.
Matt’s Call: A welcome fall treat amid all the “important” flicks that are about to be dropping in theatres all across this great land of ours.
