Never STARE AT GOATS.

One unfortunate byproduct of having a Netflix account, is stumbling upon a film you’ve never heard of – only to discover why you’ve never heard of it. For every famous failure, there are many more films so worthless, they’ve not even made it into the annals of notoriety; films so forgettable, they’ve been, well, forgotten – forgotten, and yet somehow also released on DVD. There such a film lays, with its all-star cast and pedigree, like a shitty genie, waiting for you, the foolhardy Netflixer. “How could it be bad,” you wonder, moving it to the top of your queue in spite of its one-and-a-half star mean rating. But alas, Aladdin, you rubbed the wrong lamp… Future Netflixers, take note. THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS will be a paragon of this ‘fool’s gold’ category.

Steven Spielblog raves: "GOATS... be... gold!"

The basis of MEN…GOATS, a 2005 book by Jon Ronson, is the true tale of so-called “psychic spies” in the United States Army: men who, following the tragic debacle of Vietnam, found themselves in the experimental first wave of a re-envisioned Army, one that sought to change the minds and capture the hearts of its enemies – and only failing that, to kill them. The First Earth Battalion (or Jedi, as they called themselves) was tasked with developing psychic techniques in conflict resolution: approaching battle zones with “sparkly eyes,” and towing loudspeakers to broadcast “indigenous music and words of peace.” This was all primarily the brainchild of Lt. Col. Jim Channon – and though it may have been a basically batshit dream, there was, the creators of this adaptation propose, something beautiful about it… More than beautiful, though, it was kooky. Highly kooky.

Directed by George Clooney’s best friend in the whole wide world Grant Heslov, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS turns Lt. Col. Channon into the far, far kookier “Lt. Col Bill Jango,” who, as played with hippy-dippy charm by Jeff Bridges, can’t help but avoid drawing comparison to The Dude. Unfortunately, Heslov relegates the story of Jango and the formation of the Battalion to flashback, and instead centers his narrative around Bob Wilton, a fictional journalist played by Ewan McGregor. Left by his wife and struggling with feelings of inadequacy, Wilton travels to Iraq to chase a story and prove his worth – but winds up meeting Lyn Cassady (Clooney,) a washed-up former Jedi who initiates him in the ways of the First Earth Battalion.

If this doesn’t sound like much of a plot, that’s because it’s not. The film’s present-day portion is simply, sadly lifeless – a road trip comedy that stumbles out of the gate and never finds a rhythm. Clooney fares better than McGregor, who struggles here, equally with an American accent, and with the bland everyman role he’s been handed. Wilton, our guide through the weird and wacky world of the Jedi, comes off by turns as manic and naïve, but imbued with a deep, intractable boring-ness, which I suppose was meant to make him the “relatable” one in the film’s nutty menagerie. Talk about miscalculation. Ten minutes in, I wanted to ask him to leave the movie.

Oh yeah, Kevin Spacey's in this too. He plays a real dickhead. Surprise.

As long as the piece stays in flashback and sticks to the facts of Ronson’s book, it’s not fully objectionable, though with its clunky presentational narration and mincing score, it must qualify as one of the sloppiest ever screen adaptations of a nonfiction book. But it’s in the present, in Iraq, that the thing just falls to shambles. The final stretch of the film finds Wilton and Cassady at a desert Army base, where a bastardized, violent version of the First Earth Battalion’s techniques is being used on Iraqi detainees. In what apparently passes for a climax these days, McGregor and Jeff Bridges’ Jango, (who makes an extremely predictable appearance in the film’s last act,) dose the soldiers with LSD, and set the detainees free. Listen, I oppose the Iraq war, now and always. But when our would-be Jedi heroes free a bunch of anonymous POW’s just to make a stand against “the dark side,” my reaction isn’t “hey, good for them for blowing up the Death Star,” it’s “wait, who the hell are those guys in the orange jumpsuits, and why are you letting them go?” Problem is, in order for this scene of defiance to have any impact, the audience must believe, as the protagonists do, that the First Earth Battalion is something worth fighting for. Something true, even beautiful. But the film has done nothing before this point to present psychic spies as anything but a grand-scale goof. So instead of rousing any emotion, this climax turns into one big head-scratcher. The victory of the hippy-dippy weirdos! … You know, “hurrah,” maybe, I guess!

I’d call it preachy too, but it’s unclear what exactly is being preached. There’s an unfocused, limp anti-war sentiment floated through the piece, and even a brief stop-off in the real world as our characters saunter through Ramallah long enough to deem it, too, kooky – but the filmmakers’ attempt to embed this anti-Iraq war sentiment into a seemingly un-ironic embrace of the First Earth Battalion’s worldview, makes for a finish that’s worse than muddled; it’s fucking creepy.

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THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS

Vista Theater, Los Angeles

Saturday, November 9, 4:30pm showing