The Men Who Stare at Goats

George Clooney and Ewan McGregor

In The Men Who Stare at Goats, George Clooney, as one of the founders of a crackpot U.S. military unit, wears a mustache that makes him look like Dennis Farina, and he does his best to act cool, calm, and collected — which sets him in marked contrast to all the flakes and hysterics around him. The movie is one of those over-the-top absurdist antiwar ‘’satires” that are inevitably likened to Dr. Strangelove, though a better comparison might be the fractious, madcap-incoherent film version of Catch-22. The Men Who Stare at Goats was directed by Grant Heslov (his first effort since Good Night, and Good Luck, his 2005 collaboration with Clooney), but in this case ”directed” is a charitable word.

Spinning out the tall tale of a battalion of New Age paranormal soldiers who were trained, during Vietnam, to don cloaks of 
 invisibility, kill goats with their minds, and generally turn war into a groovy thing, Heslov slaps gags together and never begins to find a point of view. Actors like Jeff Bridges (in a ponytail) and Kevin Spacey (in the worst hairpiece of his career) jabber away as if locked in their own private acting classes, and Ewan McGregor, as the reporter who tags along with Clooney when the troop is revived to help fight the war in Iraq (see, it’s a topical movie!), looks about as lost as you’ll feel. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a magical-realist sitcom war farce that ends up being about nothing but its own slovenly smugness. F

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