ScreenWize

You’ve heard those urban legend horror stories about unsuspecting folk who get picked up in bars and wake up the next morning in a bath full of ice with their kidneys removed? I am terrified something similar might have happened to me – I think I may have had a humour by-pass without realising it. At what point did I start to suspect this? While watching The Men Who Stare At Goats! A killer cast of really superbly funny actors, excellent source material in Jon Ronson’s book, and a title that just sets you up for irreverence, and what do I do? I sit there waiting to laugh, but it never comes. Surely it has to be some medical condition on my behalf.

The premise sees American journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) ditched by his wife for his editor. Feeling he has something to prove, he does his best to get himself in the thick of things in the Iraq War, but finds himself stranded for months at a hotel in Kuwait. He lucks upon contractor Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a crazy-eyed undercover operative for a secret US Army battalion. Cassady has been trained as a psychic soldier under the (all-seeing) eye of Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), the man who set up a division for the army in the 1980s to explore the usefulness of alternative fighting techniques, including peace, love, LSD trips, and elevated psychic abilities (or did he? The film begins with the disclaimer ‘More of this is true than you would believe’).

The best thing about the film is George Clooney’s finely off-kilter performance. Director Grant Heslov seems to have hitched his wagon to George Clooney’s star – he produced and co-wrote Clooney’s Good night and Good Luck- but the big names Clooney brings in (McGregor is amusing, Jeff Bridges is once again ‘The Dude’, Kevin Spacey is wasted, and amusingly George W Bush and Sadam Hussein get billing) raise a viewers expectations, upon which Heslov is unable to deliver.

It could be that the screenplay by Peter Straughan tries too hard to remain true to Ron Jonson’s novel and in the process sacrifices a cohesive narrative –the film plays instead like a sketch comedy, with lots of sight gags about hippie haircuts and new age affirmations vs the tough-old-army shtick. The film aspires to the kind of quirk the Coen Brothers do so well. It delivers quirk in droves. It just stops short of the big yucks. Or perhaps it’s just me.

Rating:

CK

Filed Under: Reviews by Simon