The Men Who Stare at Goats: Blu-ray (2009)

I was pretty pumped up for The Men Who Stare at Goats when I first saw the trailer. It had a great cast (George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor) and looked to be a quirky style of comedy that I really enjoy. My excitement faded drastically based on critical reviews and early word of mouth that it just wasn't that great a movie.  Now that I've seen it I can safely say that I enjoyed a lot of aspects of the film but it is in no way something I need to see again. The film is fairly entertaining but suffers from tonal inconsistencies and a plot that is lacking in any real story arc.

The movie is very loosely based on a book of the same title. The book features 16 different chapters who's only real connection is the use of psychic experiments so the plot is pretty much entirely made up.  Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is a small time journalist who's wife is leaving him for his editor. Anger gets the best of him and he attempts to fly to Kuwait to cover the Iraq War. While there he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who claims to be an undercover Special Forces agent (a self described Jedi) who specializes in psychic warfare. While learning firsthand Cassady's back story he also gets dragged into Cassady's current undercover mission.

There's a lot to like in The Men Who Stare at Goats and the highlight is watching Clooney and Jeff Bridges (who plays Cassady's unit's founder) do their stuff.  Clooney is amazing at playing 2 different types of roles, the suave, smooth talker we've seen in Up in the Air and Michael Clayton and the crazy eyed comedic roles he usually does in his work with the Coen Brothers. He's definitely in the latter mode here as we are never sure if his character is actually psychic or if he's just delusional. Clooney plays it up to great affect and there was more than one time that I found myself laughing just at his eye movements and facial expressions.  Bridges is also in wild man mode. His character is basically an Army hippie and he's allowed great room to go crazy with it to fine comedic affect. There are also a lot of humorous situations scattered throughout the movie with an Army dance sequence and a group LSD trip being my personal favorites.

Now for the bad, the movie treads a middle ground, it's not a bright and sunny, wacky comedy nor is it really a dark satire either. It's somewhere in the middle and the movie suffers by not really going full on for either one. There's also no real plot as it alternates from flashbacks to the present and is mostly just a series of scenes without an overriding arc to bring it all together. The tone is frustrating as well. It swings from serious to wacky on a consistent basis and more than a few times within the same scene. The movie also has a bad tendency to put characters in wigs and expect it to be funny, I'm not saying wigs can't be funny but it doesn't work here.

As good as Clooney and Bridges are, McGregor and Spacey don't hold up their end as the straight men. McGregor is fine in the role he's given but by no means excels, his performance seems to lack emotion and his narration doesn't really add much. There's also a running joke about him possibly being a Jedi which I assume is a reference to him playing Obi-Wan but it never delivers a laugh. Spacey's role is a waste of his talents. He doesn't get much to do and needed more screen time to make his character (the main villain) effective.

The Blu-ray is technically solid but also unspectacular. The video features a high level of of detail but it's not really the type of movie that comes off as amazing in high def. It doesn't feature bright colors or have anything much in the way of fancy set pieces. The audio is front heavy but does open up in the films few action scenes. Dialogue is the most important aspect of the movie and it comes across fine.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is about what I expected going in. It's got some great parts that don't quite add up to a great whole. My early hopes were too high but it's not the disaster I had heard it was either. It's a decent enough movie for wasting time, as it is entertaining, but ultimately I doubt anyone will fall in love with it.

Ratings:
Movie 3/5
Blu-ray 3.5/5