Based on a book of the same name by Jon Ronson, this film is enormously entertaining and yet also based on fact! Keep that in mind as you watch it.Ewan McGregor is our narrator and guide into the journey of this film, which basically starts out when his wife leaves him and he decides to go to Iraq to cover the war as a journalist. While there he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), who claims to be a member of the Army's First Earth Battalion, an elite and covert group trained to use the powers of their mind in warfare. With much dead-pan seriousness Lyn refers to himself as a Jedi, and the irony is not lost on the fact that Ewan McGregor also played Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels.
The story progresses with Bob Wilton (McGregor) following Lyn on a mission that he says he is on, while along the way Lyn entertains Bob's curiosity about the First Earth Battalion which we as as an audience see as flashbacks involving Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) and his hippie-esque ideals that produced his zany training methods and his group of remote viewers, a.k.a. psychic spies, a.k.a Jedi Knights.
The confidence that Clooney's character has in his supposed super powers, and his many deceptive attempts to prove that he has them, is in my opinion, one of the funniest things in the film. McGregor's character counters Clooney's enthusiasm with concern about their journey, and by fretting over whether or not his traveling partner is completely nuts. The dynamic was great, and the two of them kept me laughing even when their joke was long over. But, then again, I am a fan of Clooney's comedy, and especially of O Brother Where Art Thou, and Burn After Reading. It honestly doesn't get much better for me than those two bundles of comedic joy.
With that said, this movie may not be quite so hilarious to another as it was to me. To enjoy it, one cannot expect some sort of commentary out of its Iraq War subject matter, and one cannot think too much about where the story is heading. All you need to do as an audience member is enjoy the ride! If you do indeed get to the end of this film without seeing the humor, then first of all, I pity you, and second of all... it's based on fact! That in and of itself is the biggest joke in the film.
Here's my watered down rendition of the facts: Due to the U.S. learning that other countries were experimenting with ESP and psychic research to be used in warfare, our government actually funded many such projects throughout the WWII years until the 1990s when the projects were terminated due to lack of results and value to the intelligence community. One of their objectives was remote viewing, wherein the link to the film lies.
All in all, this R-rated flick directed by Grant Heslov is a good film overall, but not great. The disjointed story style was fine with me, but it may irk others. Drug refrences were plentiful, and the bit of brief nudity we see seems to exist only for the sake of an easy laugh. I plan on reading the book when I can so that I may look further into the differences between it and the film, and between the book and the government's actual dealings with psychic research and LSD-induced mind control. It's a fascinating part of our nation's history (if you're as interested in all things bizarre as I am), and I hope that watching The Men Who Stare at Goats will not only give you a chuckle, but will open your eyes up a little wider to the fact that truth is often stranger than fiction! And by strange, I mean really strange!
-Dani
