The Men Who Stare At Goats – You don’t have to be stoned to enjoy this flick, but it would REALLY help!
The Men Who Stare At Goats – You don’t have to be stoned to enjoy this flick, but it would REALLY help!
Rated: R Time: 1:33
Stars: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and others
Final Grade: D
Its been a while since I’ve almost gone to sleep in a movie that was so incredibly stupid, ridiculous and just a total waste of time, poor excuse for a movie, but I really caught my self nodding off during this one!
Our movie opens with poor hapless Bob Wilton(McGregor) interviewing a burned out covert army psychic operations wanna be. It’s the kind of interview that your boss says go do, so you go do. Wilton’s not going anywhere in life so he goes out and interviews this nut. He’s intrigued, but he also finds him to be a nut job. Shortly after returning to his office, a coworker keels over from a heart attach, his beautiful wife dumps him for his one armed boss (makes you wonder what accessories the artificial arm came with that didn’t make the script) and very quickly, Wilton is stuck trying to find the meaning of life. Well, at least the meaning of his life.
Hoping to prove himself to his former wife, he jumps a plane for the war in Iraq where he hopes to find his new calling as a war reporter. Why anyone would think she’s worth the effort is up to you to figure out.
While cooling his heals waiting for Iraq entry credentials in Kuwait, he runs into Lyn Cassaday(Clooney). After recognizing Cassaday from a name dropped in his psych interview back home he tries to interview him, which freaks Cassaday to no end. Eventually Cassaday sees some cosmic coincidental reason for their meeting and the two latch up like a couple Keystone cops to enter Iraq in search of their quests: Cassaday’s looking for an old Army psych buddy and Wilton’s just looking for whatever comes his way.
Along they way, while performing some psychic exercises, Cassaday runs their car into a rock. He’s got the whole desert to drive in, yet he finds this boulder to run his car into. By now, you’re really wondering why you wasted however much you paid to listen to these drugged up psych-babbling bozo’s as they get lost in the desert, captured by terrorists, escape the terrorists and end up in the hands of some clueless out sourced competitive security companies who’s embarrassing antics and incompetence make you really wonder why some folks over there really hate us.
After the obligatory car bombing, shootouts at the gas station, kidnappings and other stereotypical stuff you would expect, they finally are rescued from their lost meanderings in the desert and taken to a psychic operations outpost, which is run by Larry Hooper(Spacey), one of Cassaday’s nemesis’s from his old Army training days, and their original leader, Bill Django(Bridges). Evidently Django couldn’t get a job after being dishonorably discharged from the army after they discovered he was heavy into drugs and lightly into reality, so he teamed up Hooper and it’s time for doing the mild meld version two, Army style.
Django and Wilton get a wild hair and decide to bring the whole camp into the age of enlightenment by putting LSD in their breakfast and drinking water. While the whole camp is tripping and appreciating their newly found appreciation of love, peace and flower power, Django and Cassaday fly a helicopter appropriately into the sunset, well, most likely a sand bank, but that’s the way the script is written.
This mind numbing 93 minutes waste of time is the product of Director Grant Heslov, who brought us such flicks as “Good Night, and Good Luck”, so I know he CAN actually make a decent movie. This isn’t going to be counted as one of them.
The one thing that just absolutely amazed me during this flick is how these high caliber actors could actually make such a stupid movie! I LIKE Clooney, Bridge and the rest of the group. But one’s sure to be in Blockbuster by the end of the week!
And, yes, you don’t have to be stoned to enjoy this flick, but it would really sure help!
Leave the kids at home for this one as it’s really heavy into drug usage and not the greatest role model for kids to see.
I’m Don Rima, and that’s the way I saw it, From Where I Stand.
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