The Men Who Stare at Goats Movie Review 5/10!

Alrighty, this is one of the stranger movies I have seen lately. The closest I can categorize this movie is as a dark comedy, but its really not quite dark or cynical enough to really be called "dark." Its sort of a tweener movie, its not light enough to be a regular comedy, but its not quite dark enough to be a cynical dark comedy. In a movie like this, the thing that makes it is quality dialogue and well written characters. Not just the main characters, but all of the little bit parts as well. This is something that a director like Quinten Tarantino excels at. Grant Heslov and Peter Straughan not so much. The movie started promising, with a nice Ewan McGregor voice over, and the meeting with the first "psychic" he encounters, a man named Gus Lacy. It was quirky, entertaining, and set the pace for what I thought would be a very good movie. But it sort of went downhill from there. What it seems to be is a group of good actors given a very mediocre scripts with characters that they had very little that they could do with. They seem to be mailing it in. Kevin Spacey is just particularly wasted. There is nothing about his character that uses his talents, or requires him to be playing it. I could have played that character just as effectively. Its not really Spacey's fault I don't think, he just wasn't given anything to work with. George Clooney's character was also a null, it could have been played much more over the top. Jeff Bridges is entertaining but he is really just channeling the "dude" into a similar role, definitely nothing that we haven't seen before. Another odd thing about this movie is that it was a completley male cast except for a line or two by MgGregor's ex-wife in the movie. This isn't a good or bad thing, I just thought it was interesting. I did find Clooney calling McGregor a Jedi, but that was funny for the wrong reason I think. All in all I was very disappointed with this movie, I am glad I only paid 5 bucks to see it. Its not the worst movie in the world, if you were looking for a Friday night movie to rent then it would possibly be a decent choose, but don't waste a movie ticket on it.