Once in a while a movie will come along that seems convinced it can simply coast on to greatness. The Men Who Stare at Goats, a film that should be terrific but never transcends mediocrity, is one such example. Every actor involved in the project could be described as one of my favorites in the business, and the material seems to promise pure satiric gold. Yet as the movie goes on, the brilliance never comes. It relies all too heavily on the idea that some things are so inherently funny that they deserve to be repeated over and over again. When The Men Who Stare at Goats is over, it has not only beaten a dead horse. It has a produced a jelly that vaguely resembles a horse.
Here’s the thing: the film’s premise is inherently funny. It’s about a group of soldiers who attempt to develop psychic powers to use in battle. They call themselves Jedi warriors. This group is led by Jeff Bridges, essentially playing The Dude from The Big Lebowski again, and he's in charge of soldiers played by the likes of George Clooney and Kevin Spacey. Years after the fact, Clooney runs into a journalist played by Ewan McGregor, and the two of them travel through the desert and get into all sorts of trouble. In theory, this premise has infinite comic potential. In practice, it doesn’t click very well at all. The fact that The Men Who Stare at Goats is such a dud is almost incomprehensible.
They say there are five stages of grief. When the film ended, I spent the next day progressing through all of them. Let’s journey through all of them as they apply to The Men Who Stare At Goats.
1) Denial
The Men Who Stare at Goats had to be a good movie. It just had to be. There is not a single person in the cast that I don’t admire, and when you put them all in a single movie it can only be a masterpiece. On top of that, it seems to be in the vein of the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading. While that movie may not be great, it certainly was sharp and never excessively broad. There are moments when The Men Who Stare at Goats feels like a satirical masterpiece in the making, mocking both testosterone-fueled military types and the hippies who seek peaceful alternatives. This film must have been terrific.
2) Anger
Screw this movie. It took a fantastic premise and a top-tier cast and created a dumb, endless, pointless piece of drivel. How do you mess this up? Seriously? Everything is in place for this to be one of my favorite movies ever, and yet you screwed it up. Argh!
3) Bargaining
Maybe it wasn’t all that bad after all. I was really tired when I watched this movie. Like, REALLY tired. In fact, I think I might have fallen asleep in the second half. How about I pull it up on Netflix and watch the last 40 minutes again? It’s probably much better when I’m not on the edge of unconsciousness. It has to be... it better be.
4) Depression
Well, that was terrible. It was even worse than I remembered. Why has cinema let me down so? You have Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges and George Clooney in the same movie, and they’re all giving delightfully wacky performances, and somehow the entire film ends up being near-worthless. It’s upsetting that The Men Who Stare at Goats could end up this way. Maybe it’s gotten to the point where we need pervasive narration and flashbacks because they’re an easier way to tell the story, no matter what it does to the entertainment value and artistic merit. How can so many great people be involved in something so helplessly dumb?
4) Acceptance
Ah, forget it. This was an isolated incident. Every once in a while, there will be a missed opportunity like this. It just happens. The Men Who Stare at Goats never exactly lives up to the promise of the first half, and the final third is strangely joyless and dull, but it is what it is. All these guys have been in great movies, and this is not one of them. It should have been, but it wasn’t. That's all there is to it. Let’s lay The Men Who Stare at Goats to rest once and for all. You tried, little buddy. You just couldn’t quite pull it off.
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