Yesterday my wife and I drove down to my dad's house to visit he and my mother and while we were there, took in a movie.  We saw The Men Who Stare At Goats, (TMWSAG for short) and although I can't speak for what everyone else was expecting, I was at least wanting a few laughs.  After all, that's how the movie was billed, if you have been (un?)fortunate enough to have seen the trailer.

This is really not the case.  It's not a case of the movie being billed as something that it is not; my hallmark example in this arena is the Kevin Spacey/Frank Whaley movie Swimming With Sharks, which is billed as a comedy in every video store I've ever seen it in, and the movie is not a comedy in any shape, manner or form.  TMWSAG is lacking in laughs because, quite simply, it is a bad movie.  I know that if I sat down and broke bread with the critics who gave it such glowing reviews--and it should be noted for the record that these people are in the minority--that in all likelihood they would tell me I "didn't get the movie the way it was intended to be experienced" or some other claptrap that implies I am the one at fault for not appreciating what the filmmakers were trying to do.  I respond to this as I always do when I told that I'm not erudite enough to appreciate the subtle nuances of celluloid fuck-fests like this; by pointing out I am a certified genius, and then making a rude noise.

This movie attempts to elicit the majority of its yucks by juxtaposing wildly opposite things, which is a standard of comedic filmmaking.  In this case, it is hippies and the U.S. military.  Any intrinsic comedy in this image usually disappears about the third time it makes its way on screen, and this bell is rung over and over again.  Unfortunately, this has much the opposite effect; instead of chuckling each time Jeff Bridges or George Clooney does something very flower-child in the middle of their olive drag outfitted compatriots, you begin to wonder just exactly how realistic this portrayal is.  Wouldn't somebody step in at some point and tell Bridges that he needed to hack off his two-foot-plus long ponytail?  I mena, really?

It's particularly sad because the casting feels so wrong, and it's not because the actors themselves are bad at their craft.  Jeff Bridges' legendary performance of The Dude in The Big Lebowski feels recycled here, and George Clooney (who was so comedically good in Leatherheads, O Brother Where Art Thou? and Burn After Reading) is trying to make the best out of a bad script.  Kevin Spacey is given virtually nothing to do, and any filmmaker who wastes a talent like that should tarred and feathered.  The main spotlight goes to Ewan MacGregor, who although is a nice, serviceable actor, gets the majority of the non-flashback related screen time and is forced to play straight man to Clooney, whose jokes are unfunny to begin with.  There are also no women in this movie, which has the added effect of making it feel woefully imbalanced.

TMWSAG wants to be a hip, ironic, dark comedy, but without any comedy, it makes it feel like New Age superficial twaddle.  Avoid this film at all costs.  If you have to chew off a limb to escape the cinema turnstiles, I'll loan you a nail file to make your teeth sharper and speed up the God-awful job.  The one saving grace of the nearly two hours if my life that I will never get back is that I saw a preview for next year's horror film The Crazies, a remake of the 1973 George Romero film starring Timothy Olyphant, who was soo good in Deadwood that I gave the awful film Hitman a try on Netflix.  The Crazies looks dark, horrific and thoroughly entertaining.

The Men Who Stare At Goats: it's sad when a preview becomes the saving grace for an entire afternoon.