460. The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009)

Starring: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey

Director: Grant Weslov

Running Time: 95 mins

The Men Who Stare At Goats is an American film about a journalist that travels into Iraq alongside a former member of the New Earth Army, where he discovers the story of the unit that uses psychic powers in their missions, as well as to make goats fall over.

This film is quite disappointing. Despite having the two legends, George Clooney and Kevin Spacey in it, its comedy and storytelling is in fact of a very low quality that rarely manages to engage you or fully entertain you.

Firstly, the film’s premise is quite interesting. Although it’s unlikely that much of this story is at all true, centring such a bizarre idea in such a contentious setting as the Iraq War is initially intriguing, as well as some of the comedy at the beginning being quite entertaining.

However, after the first ten minutes or so, the whole film takes a turn for the worse. The first problem with it is the repetitiveness of its frankly quite poor comedy. The majority of the jokes are slapstick, which are funny for the first few seconds, but quickly grow boring and irritating to watch, while the rest of the comedy is also not very clever or original, making it all the more unfunny.

The other big problem with the film is its terrible failings in its storytelling. As you’ve got the story of the journalists journey through Iraq going on, which is actually not very interesting and ultimately irrelevant to watch, there’s the backstory about the New Earth Army, which goes on for the whole duration, and neither of them fit together at all.

Throughout, the whole thing gets very jumpy, with the film flicking backwards and forwards from one story or the other, and this very quickly becomes annoying and distracting to sit through, ruining the actual intrigue in the plot itself, which could be potentially interesting.

Overall, this film gets a 5.8, because although it may seem to be a relatively entertaining film, in the end, it’s very disappointing, unfunny, and irritating to watch.