“The Men Who Stare At Goats” (2009)

So it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve seen this and I wanted it to let it kind of percolate through my, erm, mind area a bit before coming to a conclusion about it. You know how it is. There are some kinds of movies where, no matter how dumb something is, you come out of it saying “OMG THAT IS AWESOME!!!” and only a couple hours later do you realize how stupid the whole thing was.

Goats wasn’t really that kind of movie but I did come out of it wondering if it was an Instant Classic* or just another silly, somewhat counterculture-y bit of popcorn. I’m still not 100% sure. On the one hand, it has Jeff Bridges in it in a role eerily similar to Lebowski. There is a part of me that wants to think of this as Big Lebowski II: Revenge of the Lebowski. Also there are goats. On the other hand, while I appreciate the comedic elements it didn’t make me laugh out loud as thoroughly as the Cohen Brothers’ 90s hit did. I expect this will be a film I’ll return to every few years, but I revisit Red Dawn every few years as well if you catch my drift.

Another thing I really liked about Goats is that it seamlessly blends the true with the silly so that if you don’t already know some of the backstory you might have a hard time this was based on anything resembling truth. And yet, the US Army really did do studies on psychic powers, they really did get into it because the Soviet Union was into it and they didn’t want to “fall behind”, and… well, just do a Google search on MK-ULTRA. The government prevents me from saying any more about that.

One thing that does kind of amaze me is the large number of bad reviews this film has gotten. In a world where the obviously sappy The Blind Side (based on a book by Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland Athletics and creator of the concept of “Moneyball” and baseball in general) gets 73% good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Goats gets… 54%? Really? Here are a couple of excerpts from these reviewers:

Whatever George Clooney and his friends are smoking, could they please pass some of it around? We’re confused and we need it.

- Kelly Vance, East Bay Express

The picture soon runs literally and figuratively into the sands and can’t dig itself out.

- Philip French, Observer (UK)

A silly movie that puts the loony in Clooney and the Ewww in Ewan

- Jackie Cooper, jackiecooper.com

I really wish Mr. Cooper would have put a period at the end of that sentence. That’s going to bother me all afternoon. In any case, I just don’t get it. Well, I can understand the POV of the first reviewer, although just because a movie is about drugs doesn’t mean it’s the kind of movie that someone who is high on pot is going to enjoy more than someone who is not. Come to think of it, I think that means I can’t understand that review. Mostly, the reviews seem to be “we don’t get it and are offended enough by it flying over our heads that we will punish it with badness.”

I try to put something about the writing in all of my reviews – yes, all 3 of them – but I’m hard-pressed to say anything that hasn’t been covered already by someone in “the biz”. Oh well. How many reviews of movies have pix of Bob Saget and Carrot Top in them?

*Note to self: Dale hates it when I capitalize things for no reason.

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