The most hopeful thing about “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” the first military satire of the post-Bush era, is that maybe this country is ready to start laughing at itself again. As a movie, it’s a pretty touch-and-go affair, one that starts with a bang, sags in the middle, and gets a little ridiculous in the end, but it provides moments of great, liberating laughter that signify our ability to come out of this national tailspin and regain our cool.
This tall tale of a yarn about a special forces unit with psychic powers has more in common with the whimsical anti-war comedies of the Vietnam era such as “Alice’s Restaurant” and “Greetings” than the clenched-stomach bile of the Bush war comedies such as “War Inc.” Some of the jokes are such bad taste that the audience seemed surprised by its ability to laugh at them. But at a promotional screening at the Guild 45th Theater the night before opening, the audience responded to jokes about things that, only last year, were the province of castigating documentaries.
The film works as well as it does because of the professional ease of its cast. A comedy with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor, and Stephen Lang is an immediate relief from the too frequent sight of the “Geeks and Freaks” gang that have recently cornered the comedy market. Not that the humor is all adultishly snooty here, but it’s not a bunch of fat ugly kids making bathroom noises while trying to lose their virginity.
The script boasts so many great ideas that the matter of them failing to coalesce in a rewarding manner is almost beside the point. Imagine the new age movement, spurred on by President Reagan’s interest in paranormal activities and the mythos of the Star Wars movies, making its impact on the US Army during the 1980’s. Imagine Bridges as the hippie guru of a special forces unit that uses mental powers rather than weapons, and Clooney as the apostle who carries the belief in such techniques into post 9/11 Iraq.
“The Men Who Stare at Goats” takes a Marx Brothers approach to the torture of terror suspects, uses the detonation of a roadside bomb as a delayed punch line to a joke, and the psychic murder of a goat as the central action on which to hang the story. There is also a wealth of throwaway humor, including two consecutive paraphrases of of-the-wall food references in Marlon Brando movies.
It’s not quite “Doctor Strangelove” meets “Blazing Saddles,” but there is enough irreverence at play here to cut the uptight ice that has frozen this country into a humorless ward of self-serious guilt-o-paths ,,,,,,,and get us laughing at ourselves again
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