The military mind lends itself perfectly to satire. Actually, it's not a loan but an outright gift to writers. Think "Wag the Dog," or "Catch-22," or the all-time best, "Dr. Strangelove." Now it's "Men Who Stare at Goats," a funny, highly entertaining movie about the wacky goings-on among a group of soldiers being trained to take part in some very strange military training. The film opens today.
Oddly, while much of the film brings laughs, there are extremely dry stretches along the way, as if writer Peter Straughan and director Grant Heslov were taking us across a vast desert, broken here and there by waterfalls of giggles and bright streams of laughter.
George Clooney and Ewan McGregor star, McGregor as Bob Wilton, a young reporter for a newspaper in Ann Arbor, Mich., sent to interview Clooney, as Lyn Cassady, a man of mystery. Any resemblance between this Cassady and Hunter Thompson's buddy, Neal Cassady, is far from coincidental. Cassady takes a liking to Wilton and they're off to a military camp in the Middle East, where everyone is on a top-secret mission.
Staring at goats is only part of it.
Clooney and McGregor are joined by Jeff Bridges, perhaps the last of the pigtail-wearing hippies, Kevin Spacey and Stephen Root, the latter an author whose book, written during an acid trip and read by an all-too-naive military man, started the whole adventure.
There's a great deal of foolishness along the way, and a great deal of goings-on that have to be accepted on faith by the audience. Much of it is totally ludicrous and yet, the acting is superior, and it's easy to get into the necessarily silly mood. Cinematographer Robert Elswit does an excellent job in making New Mexico look like Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan, and director Heslov keeps everything moving at a rapid pace.
Good entertainment.
Opens Friday at numerous theaters.
–Joe