Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Stephen Lang. Overture Films presents a film directed by Grant Heslov. Written by Peter Straughan, inspired by Jon Ronson’s 2004 book. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for language, some drug content and brief nudity)

A labored satire that plays like one big, unfunny in-joke, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a major movie bore. Based on Joe Ronson’s non-fiction book of the same name, Ewan McGregor stars as Bob Wilton, an uninspired, Ann Arbor, Michigan journalist whose life goes into a tailspin when his wife abruptly dumps him. McGregor narrates the film with a flat and bizarre sounding American accent which is obviously unnatural in cadence and tones.

His investigative fortunes turn when he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney, fine), a paranoid ex-soldier turned military intel agent and member of a secret regime called the New Earth Army, mentored in flower-power philosophy by loony ex-Vietnam vet turned New Age guru Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, channeling his “Dude” persona from The Big Lebowski) to harness their paranormal powers for enemy influence (including the ability to stop the heart of a goat by sheer concentration, or makes clouds burst at the right moment). The journalist and the kook team up and end up stranded in the Kuwaiti desert (Ishtar, anyone?), before rambling into Iraq.

Meanwhile, villainous general Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey, his umpteenth whining delivery) trains his own covert sect out in the desert, and all parties converge for a bewildering climax where goats are freed and everyone gets high on LSD, and doofuses Cassady and Django are mythicized as shamans rather than the drugged-out nuts they really are. And just wait until you see the embarrassment that is Kevin Spacey pretending to be high as a kite. Didn’t anyone ever tell him that playing drunk and acting drunk are two different things?

As directed by former screenwriter and actor Grant Heslov, none of this has the speed of a great farce or pointed social relevance of satire. The result is an experiment in god knows what, with good actors up onscreen amusing themselves, at our expenses, for an excruciating ninety minutes. None of them believe any of this for one minute (nor does author Ronson apparently, whose best-selling book was laced with skepticism).

From its opening scene of Stephen Lang running full speed into a wall to its closing scene of McGregor running through one, The Men Who Stare at Goats is a misfire in which someone forgot to write any funny jokes. And that includes the awful, repeated references to Jedi warriors (knee-slap: McGregor is onboard here). Everyone involved may have been having a ball, but we sure aren’t. Smug, self-satisfied nonsense and a waste of everyone’s time.

- Lee Shoquist