The Men Who Stare at Goats

George Clooney plays in another goofball role. This movie is a spoof on itself. It is the second movie like this this year that I can think of. The other one was Inglourious Basterds. This movie is funny but it is a joke, one could never take this movie seriously from the outset.

Clooney shows his bizaare facial expressions carrying the name Lyn Cassady. Lyn is out of the army in the movie but he spends half the movie explaining what his unit's purpose was to Bob Wilton before the movie catches up to itself. Wilton is a reporter and the narrator played by the former an actual Jedi Knight Ewan McGregor. This movie seems to occur a couple of years ago when the heat in Iraq was high. It is much calmer now, resembling South Central, LA which the left has allowed to remain in a state of decay. Cassady was in a unit called the psychic mind unit, something like this. It is hilarious but no one takes it serious.

The role of this unit is to be able to kill people, strip down the opposition, using nothing but their minds. It was supposedly based on this after the Soviet Union received some information that we were doing this during the Cold War. When in essence, we were not. It was a French hoax. But then the Russians looked into this nonsense, oh, I mean science, and made some inroads. We detected this, and then the US Army decided to duplicate this unit. After all, they could not have a monopoly on stupidity, oh I mean, telepathic research.

Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django who is the Army commander of this unit. His training and behavior is ridiculous. Bridges has a fun time with this unit. Lyn learns how to dance in this unit, is tricked into thinking that using his eyes could defeat someone else physically or mentally. Many of Lyn's fellow recruits, including himself, are deviants from the get go. They are either persuadable or actually take into this hogwash. This movie is about as realistic as Harry Potter.

The plot is as stands: Wilton wants to get into Iraq to make story. He feels he is missing out and his career is in stagnation. Lyn is going in Bahgdad and Wilton pleads with Lyn to allow him to hitch a ride. Lyn is reluctant but gives in. On the way, Wilton is just fascinated with this different type of unit that Lyn describes to him.

Kevin Spacey plays Larry Hooper is a failed sci fiction rider from Colorado. He is spiteful and labeled the serpent in this unit's Garden of Eden. This movie repeatedly makes references to the jedi code from the Stars Wars franchise. The ironic thing about this is that Jedi's in that storyline actually learn how to fight. This is after they become mentally impregnable but at some point they learn how to go on the offensive. This psychic unit never learns how to use a light saber, or a gun, or even a knife. Well, they are trained with knives but their knife training is so fantastic and theoretical, it is never used in combat successfully. They are totally useless in reality but in their heads, they are peacemakers and freedom fighters of the world.

About 6/8's into the movie the movie catches up to itself. Larry is now leading the idiotic unit but they have moved beyond their hippi roots. Bill is called back in, he still has his lengthy hair looking as out of place as possible.

Lyn grows depressed in the movie because he misses the good ole days. He does not seem to have a purpose anymore. He never actually did. This entire unit is a waste of time and energy. But the Soviets can not monopolize the knowledge of the paranormal. This movie is preposterous but so is Dumb and Dumber. This movie is not nearly as funny as Dumb and Dumber and this movie is not an insult to the military either. It is not bashing the war on Iraq or the dangerous dictator who used to rule that country with an iron fist. This movie is innocent, absurd from its genesis.

The Men Who Stare at Goats does not finish strong though. The ending is pretty weak. It is hard to describe what happened. They released the goats they used to stare at with their death stares. Wilton gets his story and he carries the flame of this unit which accomplished nothing and satisfied no one but the nuts who were involved.

This movie promotes Twizzlers which I loath. The exceptional general in the Transformer's movies-Glenn Morshower-has a small role in this baseless film. He is Major Holtz and besides Wilton, is probably the only character in this film that has his head screwed on right.

I did laugh several times in the movie, so that affect and satisfaction is noteworthy.

I allocate this movie two stars.**