Staring at goats with sparkling eyes

If a story about a journalist trying to find his purpose in life ending up in Iraq in 2003 with a former soldier who, through military training, has psychic powers and an incredible tail, and seeing an entire army base being doused with LSD piques one’s interest, then “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is up the right alley.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a journalist in Anne Arbor Michigan who encounters a man named Gus Lacey (played by Stephen Root, Milton from “Office Space”), a man who tells Wilton about a secret government program in which the goal was to create psychic soldiers. Wilton writes Lacey off as crazy.

Then Wilton’s wife leaves him for his editor.

In his downward spiral of anger and depression, Wilton decides to save his marriage by covering a big story, the beginning of the war in Iraq.

Unfortunately, every reporter wants access to the war zone and while Wilton waits for his shot, he meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a man Gus Lacey had told him to see for more information about the secret government program.

What follows in the rest of the film are hilarious tales of the psychic soldier program in the 1980s (Cassady prefers the term “Jedi soldiers,” which is hilarious to watch him explain this to Wilton, seeing as McGregor played a Jedi in the “Star Wars” prequels) as Cassady and Wilton are on a mission Cassady refuses to explain to the reporter.

Clooney shines in the film. The idiosyncratic personality traits his character has make for many gut busting laughs.

He cloud bursts with his mind, knows how to take a man down with a biodegradable instrument in numerous ways and for a psychic.

He cannot seem to avoid a car accident in the middle of the desert.

Another stand out performance is Jeff Bridges, who plays Bill Django.

Django was a soldier in Vietnam who, after being shot, decides to create a program to better the soldiers’ performances in battle.

His quest for research brings him to communes, orgies, drugs and the hippie lifestyle of the times.

It is almost seeing were his character, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski from the 1998 Coen brothers film, “The Big Lebowski” came from. Django returns from his adventures to create the New Earth Army, a program to create super soldiers with super powers.

Kevin Spacey plays the antagonist, Larry Hooper, who is a scam artist posing as a psychic who hates Django, and hates Cassady even more for possessing real psychic powers.

The Hooper character’s specialty was bending spoons, which may have been a joke about Uri Geller, the spoon bender who was called out as a phony in the 1970s on the “Tonight Show.”

The interaction between Cassady and Wilton is superb. McGregor plays a great straight man to Clooney’s eccentric behaviors and ideas.

Yet, no matter how much trouble Cassady gets them in, Wilton continues to follow because the story is so bazaar that to leave would be unthinkable.

The film is character and joke driven, which means the plot is not clear.

There are stories, but a general plot is the only thing about this film that is weak. It can be compared to “The Big Lebowski” in this sense; both films revolve around events and characters, but by the end of the film, one is left wondering what the movie was about.

It is understandable in “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” because it is based on a book about the U.S. military’s attempt to create such soldiers in the 1970s and 1980s through released files.

The film version is based on the ideas from the book, but had to create a narrative for a proper story.

As to the title, apparently at one point the military did try to see if soldiers could kill a goat with their minds. In the film, Cassady actually does so, which he regrets and claims it drove him to the “dark side.”

Despite the lack of an overall plot, which if there is one it is not entirely clear, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is perhaps one of the best comedies to come out in a long time.

It is clever, witty, the characters are written and performed well and the film goes beyond ridiculous fart and dick jokes that have dominated the genre for a long time.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is recommended for fans of “The Big Lebowski.” “Office Space” and other comedies which fit in that kind of vein of humor.

It is not slap stick or juvenile humor.

It isn’t high brow or low brow humor, but falls nicely in the area between the two.