The Men Who Stare at Goats (Friday, November 6, 2009) (159)

I first heard about this movie in mid-September when Stephen Colbert interviewed author Jon Ronson who wrote the book the movie was based on, The Men Who Stare at Goats. The interview and segment, I thought was hilarious, and the Army program he described was totally bizarre and amazing.

The story goes that at some point after the Vietnam war, the Army began experimenting with 'new-age' psychic and transcendental meditative powers to be able to use love in their military work. Ultimately, they used these skills to kill their enemy with mind-powers and hippie-artstuff rather than using traditional weapons. They created the secret First Earth Battalion, a group of soldiers who were trained to be psychics and extrasensory perceptors, and actually worked to kill goats by exploding their hearts through deep concentrated thoughts.

Suffice it to say, after watching Colbert and knowing that George Clooney and Ewan McGreggor were in the film adaptation of the book, I was totally excited for the film. Sadly, the movie is terrible. It takes amazing material with tremendous potential (I think) and turns it into such a banal comedy with no discernible plot and modernizes the story until it basically trivializes the American tragedy in Iraq.

I have to blame director Grant Heslov and writer Peter Straughan for the changes of narrative and tone (I have not read the book, but it is a work of non-fiction). For reasons I can't figure out, the main character of the movie, Ewan McGreggor, is a journalist at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. He finds out about the secret Army force and tags along on one of their missions in Iraq. The suggestion is that the First Earth Battalion was active in the early stages of the Iraq war.

But it wasn't - the program was ended in 1995. This is not a huge problem (I'll give them poetic licence to change historical facts), but it becomes upsetting when they suggest that some of the torture that happened in the early stages of the war was done by these super-soldier psychic clowns (clowns gone bad).

Clooney, as the one somewhat rational and serious First Earther is pretty good in the role. He's very earnest and convincing. Jeff Bridges, as the head guru and creator of the battalion is also funny. Kevin Spacey, as the self-obsessed, maniac present-day leader of the unit who led the group from good to evil, is terrible - but we shouldn't forget that he forgot how to be a good actor sometime in 1997, so this is no surprise.

The biggest problem I had was that as I watched it, it was totally unclear what was happening and what was going to happen next. The plot was totally invisible and meandering. The story should not have been about some over-the-hill soldiers in their 50s still holding on to their old powers from 20 years ago - it should have been about the program that existed in the 1970s and 1980s and how they did what they did. It also should not have been a screwball Austin-Powers-like comedy. If it had been a bit more sober, I think the comic elements (staring at goats, bending spoons with your mind, something called 'sparkly eyes') would have been more powerful.

In the end, this is a totally unsuccessful movie. If you really want an interesting and hilarious explanation of the First Earth Battalion, watch the Colbert interview with Ronson and his skit on goat staring here and here.

Stars: 1 of 4