CinePhillyist Reviews... The Men Who Stare at Goats

Maybe it's because I love war movies. Maybe it's because I love George Clooney. But The Men Who Stare at Goats, based on a book by Jon Ronson and directed by Grant Heslov (a distant relative-of-a-relative by marriage, but that's not really pertinent), was definitely on my list of most-anticipated movies of 2009. The film, which is based on more truth than you'd like to believe (a paraphrase of the opening title card), follows a reporter's quest to learn more about an elite group of psychic soldiers, nicknamed "Jedi warriors," also features (as Allison so eloquently put it in today's CinePhillyist) "Obi-Won, Kaiser Soze, and The Dude"—a cast list that at once made me giddy with anticipation and totally nervous that the movie wouldn't do its cast justice.

My fears are now assuaged. Although Goats isn't a perfect movie by any means, it manages to entertain, delivering an amusing premise, well-timed lines, and solid acting out of the leads (even though Ewan McGregor definitely struggled to maintain his American accent throughout the film and ended up sounding slightly monotone as a result). As an added bonus, references to the Star Wars films and Jedi knights abounded—great on nerd factor on their own, but throw in McGregor, who played a major role in the prequels, and you get a kind of meta humor not usually seen in film. Easy and obvious? Yes, but that doesn't mean I didn't laugh at every one. And if Star Wars jokes aren't right for you, you'll probably at least laugh at Clooney's deadpan, at Jeff Bridges' transformation from hardened soldier to "New World Army" hippie-fighter, or at Kevin Spacey generally being Kevin Spacey.

But although humor can go a long way, a film needs substance to succeed, and there were a few problems on that end. The plot was told largely in flashbacks narrated by McGregor's character, even though the flashbacks weren't his own. While the film is supposed to be the character's reflections on his investigation into the Jedi warriors, things might have been more engaging if the other characters had the opportunity to tell their own stories—and it would have mitigated McGregor's aforementioned monotone. The film is also missing about twenty years of Bridges' character's personal history, connecting the flashback scenes to the film's "present," so it's hard to equate the broken man we see "now" with the confident, kooky soldier we saw "then." No doubt the years had been tough, but it might have been nice to see a few examples.

The ending is similarly missing something. Maybe I was just dissatisfied because it was just this side of cliched, or maybe I wanted a bit more action in the present leading up to it, but instead of leaving the theater blown away by the film, I left saying "that was fun," but not feeling fully satisfied. The writing was good; the acting was excellent; but in the end, something failed me. Which isn't to say I won't be eager to watch again when it hits HBO—just that I probably won't go out of my way to buy the DVD.