The Men Who Stare at Goats

What a phenomenal cast!  What high expectations I had going into the movie!  Such an interesting piece of cover art!  George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan MacGregor, Kevin Spacey and a goat: even the cover art made me chuckle out loud when I first saw it.  Granted, I had absolutely no clue what the movie was about when I first started watching it, but after watching the first 10 minutes, premise seemed promising and absolutely hilarious: Special psi-ops team who used mental powers to help the US army, in an exploratory attempt to try and engage through semi-non-violent means.

The movie itself was enjoyable, passed the time, but I felt in many times, it tried too hard to be weird, and quirky (Clooney: SICK ops? Spacey: It’s PSYCH ops) in a lot of obvious ways.  I mean, I should have known that going into the movie, after all the cover art is these guys with a goat.  It passes with a series of vignettes and flashbacks, about the beginnings of the New Earth Army after the Vietnam War and current operations in the Iraq war (apparently, according to wikipedia, at least partly based on true story).

I have to say I thought Jeff Bridges was hilarious as a military sergeant turned hippie/burn-out that tries to revolutionize the US army with flowers and yoga.  Clooney plays his loony, over the top character (see Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou?) as opposed to his traditional debonair self (see Oceans Eleven, Out of Sight) well enough, though the entire movie seemed a bit too contrived, a bit over-the-top Coen-wanna be (read Raising Arizona/Big Lebowski rather than Barton Fink/No Country for Old Men) for me to really appreciate and get into it.

That said I appreciate the effort and still had an ok time…$4

If you heart The Men Who Stare at Goats:

Recommendations from …:

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Burn After Reading
Pulp Fiction