The Man Who Stared at The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)

Yesterday, while watching Big Trouble, I sent out a vague message on Twitter at my surprise of seeing goats show up in the movie. I didn't say what movie I was watching, I simply wanted to pique people's curiosity at what movie I might be viewing. Surprisingly, I got several guesses in a short period of time pondering if I might be watching The Men Who Stare at Goats staring George Clooney. We now know that wasn't the case, but I thought "Hey, why not make that today's movie?" So here you have it. Thanks to @Arleigh_S, @sniperct, & @ethernz for your direct influence on today's viewing. More after the jump!


I had heard a little bit about this movie before watching it. It was causing some noise in the film community and created a fair buzz as it went from one film festival to another in the summer. Trailers never really caught my eye, but I'd heard quite a number of good things. But I'd also heard some pretty bad things about it too.

The film revolves around Skip (played by George Clooney) and Bob (played by Ewan McGregor) as they go into Iraq on a secret mission. A psychic mission to be precise. You see Skip was part of a secret military group which was trying to train psychic super-soldiers, or "Jedi" as they're called in the film. Yes, I'm not making that up. This group, lead by Jeff Bridges (they call him Bill in the movie, but I'm pretty sure he was playing himself) starts off as a hippy influenced "make peace not war" ideal, but eventually is undermined. This is where the title comes in. They used their psychic powers to stare at, stop the hearts of, and thus kill goats with their MINDS. According to Skip this turned them to the "dark side" and put a curse on all involved.

This is the man who stared at goats. Now you know.

As interesting as that all sounds, the movie unfortunately isn't. I found my mind wandering in boredom towards the end of the movie. I should be clear that at the start of the movie I was all in. I thought George Clooney's character was interesting, if not a little on the kooky side. I can say the same about Jeff Bridges, but I'm wondering how many times we'll see him play the nature loving dude in movies. Ewan McGregor, however, playing the everyman stuck in a crazy situation, started to pull at the whimsical strings sewn throughout the movie, and by the end the whole thing was unraveling for me. By the end, even with the weird ending, I simply wasn't in it anymore and found myself just not caring what happened. The history of this psychic group was interesting, but the events of the present day just didn't seem important.

My biggest question is how did they not get sued or something by George Lucas with all their references to Star Wars? And is that the primary reason they hired Ewan McGregor? Oh the irony of having the man who is known for playing Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequel trilogy ask "What's a Jedi?" I just hope that wasn't supposed to be one of the funny moments in the movie, cause I didn't find it so. In fact most of the jokes I saw simply fell flat for me. Recommending this movie to someone would be difficult for me. I didn't hate it, but I didn't think it was that good. Some of the characters are kooky, odd, and charming, but sadly it wore thin for me by the end.