Jedi Mind Tricks, by Josh Long

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS (2009)
Directed by: Grant Heslov
Written by: Peter Straughan
Starring: George Clooney, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a comedy about people who have (or think they have) Jedi powers. It has an all-star cast, an interesting concept partially based on reality, and potential to be very funny. All the pieces are there, but are the filmmakers able to put them together?

The movie opens with an intertitle reading “More of this is true than you would believe.” And from the trailers and commercials, we kind of had that idea. It’s a fictional story based on a real life army group called the “First Earth Battalion.” Adapted for the film as the “New Earth Army,” they are a team of “warrior monks” who use New Age techniques as simple as yoga and as wild as psychokinesis. Ewan McGregor takes the role of a journalist who follows Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a member of the New Earth Army, into Iraq on a secret mission. Throughout the mission, we flashback to scenes chronicling the way the battalion began and grew through the 70s and 80s.

Clooney and other characters specifically refer to themselves as “Jedi” which adds a clever joke, since audiences will remember that Ewan McGregor played Obi-wan Kenobi in the recent (terrible) Star Wars prequels. And the idea isn’t totally unbelievable. The real-life First Earth Battalion began as an extension of the “human potential movement” in California, closely associated with hippies, free love, and LSD. That someone would take something as popular as the New Age movement and find in it military applications is not a huge surprise. Clearly it isn’t something that would actually ever go through, and in reality they were never actually endorsed by the US military, as they are in the film.

The cast of quirky characters is fun to watch; Clooney is especially entertaining. His performance will remind viewers more of his O Brother Where Art Thou? days. And there are some great one-liners. But despite an interesting concept and some huge names, the movie falls apart in the third act. Up through the first two I found it enjoyable, if not particularly compelling or challenging. It’s fun, it has a goofy concept behind it, and several good laugh moments. But as the third act begins (it’s a pretty clear break), things start to spin completely out of control.

Without giving too much of the story away, I can say that Clooney and McGregor’s characters are suddenly and inexplicably re-united with the old team (Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey in a joyless and utterly wasted performance). The plot points that continue after this are so unlikely and so unbelievable (even in the context of this unbelievable concept) that I was convinced the main characters were dreaming or hallucinating. But they’re not. The pacing is wrong, the characters don’t act like they should, we rely on character development that hasn’t happened – this is the third act of a terrible movie pasted in after the first two acts of a decent movie.

The rest of the movie keeps us invested because there’s a doubt in our minds whether or not these “Jedi powers” are real. Everything attributed to psychic powers could be explained by natural science, even if it’s a far-fetched coincidence. When the movie stays on the fence this way, it makes the warrior monks so much more interesting. But in the third act it’s as if the movie gives up entirely and falls ungracefully to the wrong side of the fence. I haven’t read the book, but I would guess that this is where the divergence between the real story and the fictional account takes place.

For the first two-thirds I was willing to accept some things that were strange or inexplicable because I assumed the movie would lead to a point where it all made sense. Unfortunately, I was giving it too much credit. The strange albeit interesting title, The Men Who Stare at Goats, is actually a pretty good analogy for the movie as a whole. We know, as the audience, that there has to come a scene in the movie where they stare at goats. And when it finally comes, it’s not that interesting, and ultimately doesn’t matter very much. It sets you up for something that, when you get it, turns out it wasn’t worth it in the first place. If you want to see it for pure comedic enjoyment there are some good moments, but overall the movie ends up being a disappointment. Which I found…well, disappointing.