Sunday, August 22, 2010

Mini movie review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Well, I didn't love it, The Men Who Stare at Goats.  On the plus side: it's short, clocking in around 90 minutes; it's got a great cast - Ewan McGregor, George Clooney (wearing an appalling mustache), Kevin Spacey, Jeff Bridges (as a military The Dude); the goats are super-cute.  On the minus side: this movie doesn't really know what it wants to be - and not in a daring, genre-defying way.  It's not funny enough to be a comedy, nor dark enough to be a black comedy, nor true enough to be an exposé.  That often seems to be a problem with "based on a true story" movies.  In this case, there actually was a unit in the U.S. military that tried to train psychic soldiers - apparently all the flashback moments in the film are based in fact - but this movie can't decide if it wants to make fun of this or present it in a respectful way, and thus falls pretty flat.  They needed to commit one way or another. 

At least it was short.

1 comment:

  1. Nice write-up. That's how I felt about MWSaG. I wanted to love it for the cast, but the material just never let me.

    ReplyDelete