The Men Who Stare at Goats Offers a Lot of Laughs Before a Perplexingly Bad Finale.

Posted by ScuzzBuster

November 8, 2009

A fleeting interest in the U.S. government’s multi-million dollar folly of the 1970s and 80s called the “Stargate” Project sparked my interest early in seeing The Men Who Stare at Goats. Those that may try to convince themselves that even the government wouldn’t be daft enough to drop that much money into something as foolish as a long term paranormal spy program would be woefully wrong. I can’t really blame the government for putting some initial research money into it. It’s the general lack of oversight and continued year after year tossing of money into this pit that boggles the mind.

I know, I know, there are plenty of you out there that are going to start asking the questions that they think no skeptic ever considered, like “what about when you’re thinking about someone and suddenly the phone rings and it happens to be them?” While those are the pressing questions that giants of science that Larry King might ask while pimping his dime store psychic scam artist of the week, the real question would be what would the odds be that you would go through your entire life without any coincidence like that ever happening? But I’m not here to argue the merits of paranormal research, just the merits of the U.S. Government’s paranormal research.

Goats is a loose adaptation of a investigative journalist Jon Ronson’s experience spending time with a former member of the U.S. Remote Viewing psychic spy program. Oddly enough, for purposes of the film the character was changed from being British to being a U.S. journalist, making the choice of British actor Ewan Macgregor to play him in an uneven American accent a strange choice. That’s forgivable, though, since even with a shaky Midwestern U.S. accent he’s a fine actor.

Playing opposite him is George Clooney, who also co-produced the film. It’s because of choices like supporting and starring in this film that I’ve grown to have a healthy admiration for Clooney, something I never thought I would say after the debacle that was Batman and Robin (hardly his fault). However, Clooney has proven that now that he is rich enough not to care about much, he seems to finance, direct and star in films that either interest him or seem like fun to him, and I happen to like a lot of his choices, especially the much underappreciated Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Now that’s enough of my usual fairly broad tangential ramblings. Goats is a clever, funny and engaging film and both MacGregor and Clooney give outstandingly quirky performances in it. Clooney manages to take the character of Lynn Cassidy, former U.S. Psychic Spy or “Jedi Warrior” from being just kind of an odd nut to being someone that you tend like and increasingly enjoy being around the more far out he gets. In spite of his severely skewed view of reality he manages to simply be a nice, well-intentioned guy in the middle of bizarre situation along with personal issues that make themselves clear as the film goes on.

Ultimately, the entire story as originally recounted doesn’t have a whole lot happen, but we do have the backdrop story following the two main characters alone over the Iraqi border from Kuwait in the early days of the Iraq War. While they end up in quite a few interesting scrapes, this does little but give some solid narrative framework to tell the surprisingly crazy story of the U.S. Psychic Spy Program. I have to say that I really adored this film—that is until the figurative mouse head in the bottom of my popcorn bucket.

Now before there’s a misunderstanding, this is a “figurative” mouse head. AMC Theaters most definitely did not serve me up a dead rodent. The rotting mouse head was the sudden misguided, and horrendously bad creative choice that was made in last 15 minutes of the film. While I ultimately have to give the film a mild recommendation, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a monumental disappointment come so suddenly from a film I enjoyed quite this much for the majority of it’s run time.
I don’t know how to go into too much detail without spoilers, but I’ll try to put it in context. The emotional resolution to the story begins with a scientifically silly plot device involving lacing some food with certain controlled substances. While the details of whether it was even possible in the manner described with the specific chemical used is highly suspect, it really pales in comparison that this was an outrageously inappropriate plot choice for the attempt at a “feel good” conclusion for the film. Now, drugging innocent people without their knowledge is not really a “nice” thing to do, but can be forgiven if it’s in line of telling a good story. However, there are specific story elements in the film which make this humorous plot device out to be a reckless, harmful and dangerous act, and it’s impossible to understand how the characters could possibly ethically justify making this choice. And, based on similar situation earlier in the film that ends tragically, this entire situation casts a horrible pall over the entire movie that it just could not recover from.

It was the emotional equivalent of coming to trust and like someone over a long period of time only to have them do something so reckless, stupid and inconsiderate that you feel dirty and betrayed. That’s where The Men Who Stare at Goats left me. It was almost as if they had 85% of a great movie written and after a complete blank on how to close it out, they just put a couple of giggling, silly 10 year old boys in the writer and director’s chair.

It’s an unfortunate resolution to a film that up until the final few minutes is a genuinely thoughtful and clever little voyage. Apart from McGregor and Clooney, there’s also a great turn by Jeff Bridges who plays the military officer who convinces the government to let him research and run the paranormal projects for the government. Also snuck into the film is Kevin Spacey, who’s always excellent, but probably a tad bit wasted here not given much to do.

The Men Who Stare at Goats could have been a more substantive film about how truly outlandish the government’s waste of money into paranormal projects was. Even if you stretch reality to the absolute limit and make the case that there were some pieces of it that showed results in some of its attempts to produce some evidence of paranormal powers, the results were so meager they would have no practical application or benefit. Instead, a blank check was pretty much written over two decades to continue to finance something that no reputable, double-blinded scientific study has ever shown any statistically significant or reproducible results from. And it was this financial justification that gave those that devoted their lives to that program for such a long period of time a reason to continue to self-delude themselves into believing that there was actually something worthwhile going on there.
Instead, it took the light-hearted and wide-eyed approach to the subject matter, which would have been fine had the ball been not so horrifically fumbled in so many ways in the final act of the film.

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