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Strange and strained, 'Goats' is still good for a giggle

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By NEIL POND American Profile

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 27, 2009

Welcome to the modern army, where psychic soldiers carry flowers instead of firearms, "see" things over impossible distances and try to run, unscathed, through solid walls.

It's not as far out as you might think. In fact, "The Men Who Stare at Goats" is based on a 2004 book by Jon Ronson, who interviewed some of the former participants in an experimental U.S. Army unit studying the application of hallucinogenic drugs and paranormal powers to modern warfare during the 1980s.

As serious as the U.S. military may have been in this endeavor, however, it's played for looniness in this quirky comedy starring George Clooney, Evan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.

Clooney is Lyn Cassady, a specially trained "warrior monk" steeped in the mind-bending methods of his mentor, Bill Django (Bridges), a former gung-ho Viet Nam vet who came home with a hippie-dippy dream of marrying U.S. military might with New Age flower power. Cassady, once a special-ops superstar who used classic rock music to trigger his out-of-body experiences, is now retired. But he finds himself back in action when he gets a mysterious "calling" to head to war-torn Iraq.

Spacey has a scenery-chewing turn as Larry Hooper, a would-be usurper with his own ideas about putting some mental muscle in the military - including using brain power to kill, researched through experiments to stop the heartbeat of goats by simply staring at them.

McGregor narrates the tale as a former small-town newspaper reporter based on the real-life Jon Ronson, here named Bob Wilton.

He stumbles onto the story after he enlists in the army and becomes embedded with American troops in Kuwait, where all the loose ends come together.

The movie has a few chuckle-worthy moments, but never quite coheres into a ho-ho whole. The oddity of its subject matter can't quite find a suitable groove between weird believability and preposterous put-on.

The plot meanders wildly, and the actors never seem to know if they're in a drama or a comedy.

Obviously aiming for the neighborhood of "Dr. Strangelove," director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant, black-comedy Cold War spoof of the 1960s, "Goats" also cops a flashback feel from "Forrest Gump" and tries to tap the same satirical vein of Robert Altman's classic "M*A*S*H."

It's like a Cohen Brothers movie without any of the Cohens' magical touch with characters, story or technique.

Strange and strained, "Goats" comes up a few bleats short of the belly laughs it intended. But it does offer an offbeat respite from the same old multiplex same-old - and a toe-tapping soundtrack in which Boston's "More Than a Feeling" is, indeed, more than a feeling.

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