Excellent Variety review from Venice - compares it to Coen Bros - if this level of review continues, this needs to be thrown into any awards predictions list for consideration (I'd certainly figure Jeff Bridges as a real shot at supporting actor nomination, and if all breaks right, maybe even the win)
The Men Who Stare at Goats An Overture Films release presented in association with Winchester Capital Management and BBC Films of a Smoke House Pictures/Paul Lister production. (International sales: Mandate Pictures, Santa Monica.) Produced by Paul Lister, George Clooney, Grant Heslov. Executive producers, Barbara Hall, Jim Holt, David Thompson. Directed by Grant Heslov. Screenplay, Peter Straughan, inspired by Jon Ronson's 2004 book.
Lyn Cassady - George Clooney Bill Django - Jeff Bridges Bob Wilton - Ewan McGregor Larry Hooper - Kevin Spacey Todd Nixon - Robert Patrick Gen. Hopgood - Stephen Lang Gus Lacey - Stephen Root Maj. Jim Holtz - Glenn Morshower Mohammad Daash - Waleed Zuaiter Debora - Rebecca Mader
By DEREK ELLEY
A serendipitous marriage of talent in which all hearts seem to beat as one, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" takes Jon Ronson's book about "the apparent madness at the heart of U.S. military intelligence" and fashions a superbly written loony-tunes satire, played by a tony cast at the top of its game. Recalling many similar pics, from "Dr. Strangelove" to "Three Kings," and the screwy so-insane-it-could-be-true illogic of "Catch-22," this is upscale liberal movie-making with a populist touch, in Coen brothers style. Enthusiastic welcome at Venice, likely to be echoed at Toronto, should translate into friendly biz Stateside in November. Coming in at a tight, well-paced 93 minutes, Grant Heslov's second feature -- after his little-seen anti-corporate golf comedy, "Par 6" (2002) -- clearly benefits from his close working relationship with star George Clooney, following their writing collaboration on "Good Night, and Good Luck." It also benefits from the dense but pacey screenplay by Brit playwright Peter Straughan, whose only prior credit was the equally little-seen 2007 comedy "Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution."
"Goats" is officially "inspired" by Ronson's book, which accompanied a three-part docu series, shown on Blighty's Channel 4 in late 2004, called "Crazy Rulers of the World," tracing some of the U.S. military's more outre ideas for policing the world, terrorism in particular. Straughan's screenplay takes many of the stories from the book -- apparently true, per Ronson, who's made a career from recounting "true tales of everyday craziness" -- and, as a way into the material, invents the character of a small-time, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based journalist, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), who's desperate to get into Iraq at the time of the Bush invasion.
After a comically cautionary intertitle ("More of this is true than you would believe") and an opening gag (repeated, with a variation, at the end) that immediately sets the tone, the first reel is thick with info and time shifts from the present (starting in fall 2002) back to the early '80s, which are a tad difficult to digest on first viewing.
In a nutshell, Wilton, assigned to interview Gus Lacey (Stephen Root), an apparent wacko who claims he has special psychic powers, stumbles across an even crazier story: Back in the '80s, the government had a top-secret unit of "psychic spies" who were trained to kill animals by staring at them. The most gifted of the group, says Lacey, was a certain Lyn Cassady.
Wilton heads for the Middle East in spring 2003, looking for a good war story. Stuck in Kuwait City, he bumps into "Skip" (Clooney), who initially claims to be an Arkansas trashcan salesman but is actually Cassady, who's been reactivated and is on a super-secret black-op mission to Iraq.
As the two bond, and Wilton persuades Cassady to take him along, it's clear Cassady's elevator stops well short of the top floor. Claiming to be a "remote viewer," "Jedi warrior" and several other things in between, Cassady fills Wilton in on the formation 20 years earlier of the New Earth Army, brainchild of a Vietnam vet-turned-New Age hippie, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, with goatee and pigtail).
In one sequence straight out of the Joseph Heller playbook, the U.S. military decided to adopt Django's New Earth manual, written with liberal doses of LSD, as a new template for ways of policing the globe. "We must be the first superpower to have super powers," exhorts Django, setting up a squad of psychics he dubs "warrior monks."
As the pic flip-flops between flashbacks illustrating Cassady's narrative and the present time, the pair get lost in the desert, kidnapped and traded by terrorists, and then lost again in the desert. Meanwhile, the backstory progresses to a point where one new member, Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), tried to sabotage the NEA, prepping the movie for its acidly funny climax.
Incredibly dense screenplay traverses not only 20 years of U.S. military abitions, starting in the Reagan era, but also provides its own riffs on such public scandals as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. What saves it from getting dramatically tripped up by its own populist grandstanding are the leading perfs, which motor the movie far more than the messages.
As the completely nuts Cassady, Clooney anchors the movie in a beautifully calibrated demo of comic timing and sheer physical presence. More than just his nebbish straight man, McGregor has some of the best lines, slicing through Clooney's utter self-conviction with a handful of well-chosen words. Bridges, channeling "The Big Lebowski," fits Django like a glove, and Spacey's appearance midway adds some welcome tartness to all the New Age weirdness.
Robert Elswit's beautifully composed widescreen lensing of New Mexico's deserts (standing in for Iraq) and Puerto Rico (repping Vietnam and other locations) is aces, without dominating the characters. Other tech credits, including Tatiana S. Riegel's smoothly succinct editing, are top drawer.
End crawl stresses that though some characters are based on real people (the New Earth Army was reportedly the idea of a certain Col. Jim Channon), the movie is a work of fiction. Yeah, right.
Camera (Deluxe color prints, Panavision widescreen), Robert Elswit; editor, Tatiana S. Riegel; music, Rolfe Kent; music supervisor, Linda Cohen; production designer, Sharon Seymour; art director, Peter Borck; costume designer, Louise Frogley; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS Digital/SDDS), Edward Tise; sound designer, Mark Mangini; visual effects supervisor, Thomas J. Smith; special effects coordinator, Kevin Harris; assistant director, David Webb; casting, Patricia Alonso. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (noncompeting), Sept. 8, 2009. (Also in Toronto Film Festival -- Gala Presentations.) Running time: 93 MIN.
Positive overall but less favorable H'wood Rep review:
Film Reviews The Men Who Stare at Goats -- Film Review By Deborah Young, September 08, 2009 12:49 ET
Cast and CrewCast: George Clooney (Lyn Cassady), George Clooney (Executive Producer), Ewan McGregor (Bob Wilton), Paul Lister (Producer), Kevin Spacey (Larry Hooper), Grant Heslov (Producer), Jeff Bridges (Bill Django), Grant Heslov (Director), Rebecca Mader (Helen), Peter Straughan (Screen Writer), Stephen Lang (General Hopgood), Robert Elswit (Director of Photography), Terry Serpico (Actor), Tatiana S Riegel (Editor), Sharon Seymour (Prod. Designer), Louise Frogley (Costume Designer), Amanda Mackey Johnson (Casting director), Cathy Sandrich-Gelfond (Casting director) Bottom Line: A coy spoof on the Army's interest in psychic research only laughs so far. Venice Film Festival -- Out of Competition
VENICE -- "Good Night, and Good Luck" director George Clooney and screenwriter Grant Heslov team up again in Heslov's feature directing bow, a wild spoof on the U.S. Army research's into psychic phenomena and attempt to use same in its wars from Vietnam to Iraq.
An anti-Army comedy toplining Clooney, Ewan MacGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey should have been funnier than this, but even if "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is not worth comparing to "Dr. Strangelove," it should satisfy audiences with its great cast and patent absurdities, coated in quaint nostalgia for the happy hippie days of yore.
Bob Wilton (MacGregor) is a young, not very bright reporter from Ann Arbor who signs on to cover the Iraq War. In Kuwait City he meets the enigmatic Lyn Cassady (an attractively aged Clooney), who surprisingly confides that he was once part of a select Army team of warrior monks called the Jedi, psychic spies trained to use paranormal powers against the country's enemies.
Flash back to Vietnam in 1972, where we meet Bill Django (Bridges), founder of the New Earth Army, a special Army unit trained to dance, express their feelings, and let it all hang out. Their experiments yield dubious results, apart from revealing the young Cassady's extraordinary gifts for "remote viewing," aka ESP. His psychic abilities rouse the envy of Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), an ambitious newcomer to the group who eventually takes it over, after he gets Django kicked out in disgrace.
Back to 2003: Reporter Bob and psychic Cassady set off together across the Kuwait border into Iraq, where they are immediately kidnapped and sold to another group. After various adventures they end up in a secret training camp in the middle of the desert, where Hooper is running a lab of even more loopy experiments, aided by his former boss Django, now a spaced-out alcoholic. A delirious finale closes the film on an upbeat note.
Peter Straughan's screenplay is based on a nonfiction book by Jon Ronson about the government and the paranormal. With material like this, one would have liked a more incisive comedy to materialize around the decline and fall of the New Age movement. "None of it was real," says one character, citing the cliche; "the dark side took the dream and twisted it." Cassady blames it all on a "curse" he inadvertently acquired during an experiment in which he stared at a goat until its heart stopped beating. The scene in which he does this, like numerous other gags in the film, is quick, funny and gets a good laugh, without going beyond.
The unflappable Clooney and Bridges, wearing waist-length hair and hippie garb, show a cool aplomb that gives some kind of limited dignity to their ridiculous characters and antiquated beliefs; as he watches them rise into the sky in a helicopter, high on LSD, the straight man and narrator MacGregor respectfully calls them "shaman." Spacey, who appears in a handful of scenes, has but to bat his eyes balefully to convince as a walk-on villain.
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Despite the fact that this film has one of the least appetizing titles I've ever heard, I am actually really glad to see a trade push this movie favorably. Any good film that's willing to give much-too-often-overlooked Stephen Root work has my business.
---- OSCAR FYC: Best Picture - "Up" Best Actor - Michael Stuhlbarg, "A Serious Man" Best Actress - Saoirse Ronan, "Lovely Bones" Best Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, "Basterds" Best Original Screenplay - "Up"
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Originally posted by Dr. McPhearson: Despite the fact that this film has one of the least appetizing titles I've ever heard, I am actually really glad to see a trade push this movie favorably. Any good film that's willing to give much-too-often-overlooked Stephen Root work has my business.
I am a fellow Stephen Root lover. I thought he was a comic genius as the crazy billionaire Jimmy James on "Newsradio" which was probably my favorite show on television for most of its run.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
Originally posted by seanflynn: Why was this so off the radar for people? The moment I saw it listed for Toronto, with the people associated with it, it got my attention.
Studios aren't financing cult movies these days. This was clearly aimed at review/awards situations, as its Venice premiere/Toronto gala presentations suggest.
This sounds like it could be Good Night and Good Luck redux, except as a comedy, not biopic - lean, well-scripted work, fairly newcomer director, major talent involved (Robert Elswit shot this, great cast).
Again, way too early to predict, and this doesn't look like a breakout hit, but it certainly seems plausible this could be a picture/supp actor/adap screenplay nominee, and Clooney's best actor chances for Up in the Air enhanced by this (as his supporting win for Syriana was as much for GN&GL as the film he won for).
Was there some bad advance word here? Did all the people making lists not see this scheduled or otherwise dismiss it? Is it because a few of the alledgedly knowledgeable Oscar web sites didn't mention it, thus keeping it off the radar?
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Home Reviews Sign inRegister now The Men Who Stare At Goats 8 September, 2009 | By Mike Goodridge
Dir: Grant Heslov. 2009. US. 90 mins.
The Men Who Stare At Goats is a light-hearted and highly entertaining antidote to pompous large scale movies about Iraq or Aghanistan and ironically may be the biggest hit of them all. Grant Heslov’s nimble directorial debut, inspired by UK journalist Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book, explores a secret division of the US military trained in psychic powers. Featuring a quartet of amusing, self-referential performances from Messrs Clooney, Bridges, McGregor and Spacey, it is little more than a trifle but a pleasing trifle nevertheless.
Clooney shows a natural comic timing, and Spacey is a cheerful villain This independently financed affair opens wide domestically on Nov 6 through Overture and, with at least three weeks before the avalanche of December Oscar contenders arrives in theatres, it has a strong shot at solid box office success, especially after strong word of mouth from Venice and Toronto screenings. International prospects are also bright, especially if independents can get it out before Clooney’s other 2009 release Up In The Air.
McGregor plays journalist Bob Wilton, who first hears of the unit from an interview subject in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he works. The man, a self-proclaimed psychic, claims that he was a part of a secret programme headed by the mysterious Bill Django and including one Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who now runs a dance school. The men, he says, were trained to use their minds to read the enemy’s thoughts, pass through walls and kill goats just by staring at them.
When Wilton’s girlfriend leaves him for his editor, he flees the US for Iraq in order to cover the war and try to win her back by proving that he is a serious journalist. But while waiting in Kuwait for his permit to enter Iraq, he comes across Cassady himself on a hotel patio. After some cajoling, Cassady reveals more details of the unit’s history and agrees to take Wilton with him on a business trip.
The unit, we are told in flashbacks, was formed in the eighties by Vietnam vet and new age hippie Django (Bridges) who felt that a new approach to war through peaceful means was possible. The New Earth Army, as it was called, allowed its men to take drugs and wear their hair long as they practiced their techniques. It is finally disbanded when one of the men kills himself having unwittingly taken acid administered by another member, Larry Hooper (Spacey).
Back in Kuwait, after being stranded in the desert on several occasions, Cassady reveals to Wilton that he is not on a business trip after all but has been reactivated by the New Earth Army on a secret mission to find Django, who is trapped in a clandestine militia camp run by Hooper.
Heslov shows lightness of touch throughout and, at 90 minutes, the film moves briskly; Straughan’s script is smart and exuberant and could well bag adapted screenplay nominations, while the actors are clearly having a ball. Bridges revisits his Dude character from The BigLebowski with enthusiasm, Clooney shows a natural comic timing, and Spacey is a cheerful villain. There are also many laughs to be had from McGregor referring to the unit’s other nickname The Jedi, bearing in mind his own legacy as Obi Wan Kenobi.
The Men Who Stare At Goats is a light-hearted and highly entertaining antidote to pompous large scale movies about Iraq or Aghanistan and ironically may be the biggest hit of them all
-- Screen Daily
It would indeed by curious if two of the 10 best picture films were about Iraq.
Just noticed - I don't know the budget, but this was shot in only 5 weeks last fall (which is Clint Eastwood-like economy). Clooney produced, so he likely deferred most of his salary; Bridges and Spacey likely also worked cheap to be in a quality movie. I wouldn't be surprised if this came in under $30 million, financed in part either by foreign sales or expectations of them.
I don't know how good this movie is of course not having seen it, but I know at some level this movie is one I'd like to succeed - if there is no audience for this, then films like it will no longer be made for theatrical release.
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George Clooney makes an inauspicious return to the deserts of Iraq in The Men Who Stare at Goats, a jokey mess so far from the humane, satirical alchemy of Three Kings that a revocation of the producer-star's cinematic passport to the land of military-industrial japery seems in order. Clooney is former Special Forces officer-turned-wartime-contractor Lyn Cassady, encountered in 2003 Kuwait by an itching-for-action journalist (Ewan McGregor, playing astonished straight man to everyone else) overcompensating for an ugly marital split; hearing the vet's tall tales of his '80s training as one of a secret unit of "warrior-monks" aiming to develop their paranormal talents into superpowers that could preempt armed conflict, the skeptical but thrill-seeking reporter hops into Cassady's car for a ride to Baghdad and soon finds himself a stooge on the would-be visionary's ill-defined psychic "mission."
This road-movie plot strand repeats the same gags wearily, mostly variations on Clooney attacking McGregor with "mental energy" efficiently channeled through karate and a handily utilized bottle opener, but the quest turns out to be genuine: a confrontation with Cassady's former rival (Kevin Spacey) in his old corps of telepaths, now leading a private militia specializing in prisoner abuse via strobe light and endless play of Barney the Dinosaur's theme song—Zen tactics twisted to the dark side. (It's typical of the film's labored snark that the psychic soldiers' "Jedi" ways are repeatedly detailed to a baffled ex-Obi Wan McGregor.)
Director Grant Heslov, co-writer with Clooney of their overpraised but infinitely more focused Good Night, and Good Luck, briefly finds a decent comic groove in flashback sequences where a ponytailed Vietnam hero (Jeff Bridges, doing a more goal-oriented Lebowski turn) leads his "New Earth Army" through freeform dancing, meditation, and amphetamine jags, but it's dumb, easy fun with no ambition beyond putting Clooney in a shabbily shaggy wig. Loosely "inspired" (dependably a red flag in adaptation credits) by Jon Ronson's nonfiction bestseller, Men Who Stare at Goats ends in a confused mix of LSD-induced giggles and a call-to-destiny that seems both parodic and sincere. Its scattershot blasts at unconventional warfare and hippie transcendentalism are too impotent to produce much laughter, let alone the characters' longed-for ability to run through walls.
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The Men Who Stare at Goats Too Dippy to Be Serious We don't mean to sound paranoid, but: Did aliens abduct George Clooney's sense of humor? By J. Hoberman published: November 03, 2009 Laura Macgruder
Sure bleats working. Details: The Men Who Stare at Goats Directed by Grant Heslov Overture Films Opens November 6 Historical cataclysm produces conspiratorial thinking: Germany's loss in World War I, the JFK assassination, and 9/11 are all naturally understood as the stuff of unimaginable plots, unspeakable cover-ups, and unseen forces.
The guys who made The Men Who Stare at Goats can't quite decide whether this syndrome is risible or heavy or simply far-out. Perhaps hoping to seduce a receptive viewer with hypnosis, they open their movie with a bug-eyed close-up of a would-be psychic and the mind-****ing assertion that "more of this is true than you would believe."
And, all critical thinking aside, would you believe that George Clooney's latest production—directed by Grant Heslov (who wrote the Good Night and Good Luck screenplay) and loosely adapted from gonzo journalist-filmmaker Jon Ronson's 2005 account of the U.S. Army's adventures in paranormality—is meant to be a comedy? Perhaps in 1967, and under the right pharmaceutical conditions, it might have seemed so, playing as an antic blend of Catch-22 military absurdism and the counterculture bible Morning of the Magicians' "non-conformist reality."
Ronson's book—which takes its title from experimental attempts to induce goat coronaries with the evil eye—traced a circuitous path from the CIA's Eisenhower-era LSD experiments to more recent applications of musical mind control. Heslov's movie focuses on Ronson's greatest scoop, namely the battalion of occultist commandos—here called the New Earth Army—cooked up by a Viet vet colonel gone New Age. Stumbling through an obstacle course of flashbacks, the movie sends a hapless American reporter (Ewan McGregor) into the cauldron of Desert Storm, where, meeting one of these Jedi Warriors, the New Earth Army's super-intense, one-time champion goat-starer (Clooney), he loses a smidge of his smirk.
Clooney's demonstration of cloud-busting creates a few sitcom complications. But The Men Who Stare at Goats only picks up (however briefly) with the introduction of Jeff Bridges. He's the man who—having survived near-death in Nam and subsequently parboiled his brain in the hot tubs of Big Sur—sold the brass on the notion of the New Earth Army: "We'll be the first superpower to have superpowers!" Bridges's liberation training, delivered with a maximum of happy-go-lucky Dudeness, is a regimen that mixes High Times with high colonics, mass Buddhist prayer, and free-form dancing to Billy Idol's greatest hit. The grooviness grinds to a halt (as does the movie) when this cheerful shaman is outmaneuvered by Kevin Spacey's Mr. Bad Vibes.
An uptight psychic party pooper, Spacey effects a coup and leads Bridges's band of brothers over to the dark side, privatizing the force by outsourcing psy-ops to his own company and purging the New Earth Army of its touchy-feely, transcendental "hippie crap." It's almost like a metaphor for America going from bad (the wacky spectacle of soldiers training to be fighting monks) to worse (Spacey directing soldiers to subject POWs to brain-destroying sound loops of Barney the Dinosaur singing "I Love You") and back again! (The happy ending is a climactic hootenanny involving the old CIA fantasy of dumping acid in the water supply.)
Despite a backbeat of perky music and the sarcastic voiceover meant to lubricate the action, The Men Who Stare at Goats lacks pizzazz. The movie isn't funny enough to work as farce, but it's far too dippy to take seriously. What's mildly exasperating is that there is an actual quest involved: The Men Who Stare at Goats goes out to the desert in search of its tone—and never finds it.
Speaking of conspiracies: Warner Bros.' decision to withhold press screenings for the new Richard Kelly film The Box until two days before its opening, precludes my writing about it in these pages; a short review will be posted on the Voice website November 6.
‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ lacks focus Wildly inconsistent tone sinks well-intentioned satire
REVIEW By Alonso Duralde Film critic msnbc.com contributor updated 5:26 p.m. MT, Tues., Nov . 3, 2009
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” makes comedic hay out of an apparently true effort by the U.S. Army to develop psychic super-soldiers who would conquer the enemy with their minds instead of guns. But while Jon Ronson’s non-fiction book on the subject is probably quite the page-turner, this satirical screen adaptation veers so wildly in tone and temperament that it rarely delivers as either a comedy or a timely satire.
Ewan McGregor — here, as in “Amelia,” struggling to sound flatly American — plays Bob Wilton, an out-of-work reporter from the Midwest who travels to Kuwait in the early days of the second Gulf War in the hopes of being embedded with a combat battalion. Instead, he winds up crossing paths with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who tells Wilton about his years in a top secret experimental army unit known as the New Earth Army, which trained soldiers to astrally project, break up clouds with their minds and any number of other New Age-y activities that one wouldn’t normally associate with the military. (The title refers to a darker exercise, in which the trainees attempted to kill livestock with nothing more than eye contact.)
While Cassady claims to be going to Iraq for commercial reasons, Wilton soon learns that he’s trying to find the New Earth Army’s founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), who appeared to Cassady in a vision. When the two track down Django at a facility being run by Cassady’s arch-nemesis, psychic faker Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), “Goats” takes a dark turn that doesn’t fit with the movie we’ve been seeing — it writes a darkly political and satirical check that the screenplay by Peter Straughan (“How to Lose Friends & Alienate People”) doesn’t have the heft to cash.
One of the big problems with “Goats” is that it can’t decide whether to treat these psychic soldiers as jokes or as the real deal; sometimes we see Cassady accomplish amazing things and other times, he’s presented as a buffoon. Ultimately, this indecision makes it difficult to know if we’re supposed to be taking this story seriously or laughing it off.
One of the biggest missteps made by first-time feature director Grant Heslov (who wrote and produced Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck”) is the casting of McGregor — the accent problem aside, his presence is distracting in a movie about soldiers who constantly describe themselves as “Jedi warriors.” With McGregor having played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the “Star Wars” prequels, every time someone in the movie says “Jedi” (and it happens a lot) it becomes a painfully obvious self-referential gag, and the filmmakers just keep jabbing you in the sides with sharp, annoying elbows.
Clooney, at least, plays it thoroughly straight all the way through. The film may be unsure what to make of this character, but he believes in himself and his ability through and through, as does Jeff Bridges as a Vietnam vet who wholeheartedly embraces the alternate life options of the Woodstock era. Spacey, for the most part, has little to do but snarl.
Once you get past the wow-this-really-happened aspect of “Goats,” the movie doesn’t surprise or provoke the way it should. There are a handful of funny moments — most of which appear in the trailer — but overall, this is a film that would have benefited from someone staring at some rewrites.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
A **1/2 out of **** review from the ASSOCIATED PRESS...
Review: `Men Who Stare at Goats' has fuzzy vision By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
A fun tone is undermined by disjointed storytelling in George Clooney's "The Men Who Stare at Goats," and it all starts with the disclaimer that opens the movie: "More of this is true than what you might imagine."
This wry comment serves as a nod and a wink from the filmmakers, a license to do what they will to Jon Ronson's amusing nonfiction account of the U.S. military's hush-hush research into psychic warfare and espionage.
What Clooney's producing partner, first-time director Grant Heslov, and his colleagues come up with is a hit-and-miss fictional narrative on which to string some of the brightest anecdotes Ronson uncovered about efforts to create warrior monks who try to walk through walls or glare animals to death.
The priceless opening scene – recreating the start of Ronson's book as a general attempts to displace his molecules and run through his office wall – promises a Catch-22 or Strangelove-style satire.
But the book is a loosely connected journey from one absurdity to the next, sprouting offshoots and asides, great stand-alone burlesques and dramas that don't lend themselves to a cohesive film.
The dramatic spine developed by screenwriter Peter Straughan jettisons much of the book's darkest and most-compelling moments – a CIA murder plot, psychic warfare links to the Branch Davidians and the Heaven's Gate cult suicides – in favor of a gag-laden jaunt stretching from Vietnam through the war on terror.
Delivered with goofy gusto by Clooney and co-stars Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey, "Goats" is fitful, undemanding, and ultimately lightweight humor.
Something of a stand-in for Ronson, McGregor's Bob Wilton is a reporter who stumbles onto the story of the New Earth Army, founded by Vietnam vet Bill Django (Bridges), the pioneer of New Age techniques meant to give his troops a spiritual edge and superpowers to win over enemies – or wipe them out.
Django's prize pupil is Lyn Cassady (Clooney), whom Wilton accompanies through a series of mishaps on a mission in Iraq.
Inspired by real people Ronson encountered, Cassady and Django have the scent of authenticity about them. Not so with Wilton and his awkward, ill-defined motivations for uncovering the story, or with Spacey's Larry Hooper, a psychic rival to Cassady who's a stiff contrivance meant to add tension.
The fictional plot line isn't terribly interesting, though it's nicely ornamented by little farces lifted from the book – a guy convinced that the Loch Ness monster is the ghost of a dinosaur, another who advises that Angela Lansbury somehow knows the whereabouts of Manuel Noriega (it was Kristy McNichol in the book, but same chuckle nonetheless).
The actors carry baggage that creates some unfortunate distractions. Clooney at times seems like a cross between his Desert Storm operator from "Three Kings" and his looney-tunes Odysseus from "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Django plays a bit like Bridges' Dude from "The Big Lebowski" had he joined the Marines.
McGregor's "Star Wars" connection proves jarring as the film incorporates Ronson's references to psychic warriors as Jedi knights. It's cute once, but the repeated Jedi-speak in the presence of Obi-Wan himself grows tiresome.
In fits and starts, director Heslov captures a lot of the drolly incredulous spirit of the book. It's just too bad the dots don't connect better.
"The Men Who Stare at Goats," an Overture Films release, is rated R for language, some drug content and brief nudity. Running time: 93 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
Posts: 27141 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
