Good in parts, but slightly disappointing as a whole.

Rating: 6/10 (13 December 2010)

"More of this is true than you would believe."
The Men Who Stare at Goats is an offbeat farce that does a lot of things right, but loses itself a bit in reaching for a "message". The cast is great, with actors like George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey proving (if you somehow didn't know already) that they all have affinity for comedic acting. Clooney and McGregor have wonderful chemistry (they spend most of the movie together), and I probably would have given this a higher score if the dynamic between those two in the first half of the story would have continued on into the second half.
McGregor plays a reporter trying to get into Iraq to cover the recent events there concerning the war, and Clooney is an undercover contractor he meets and learns about the government's attempts at developing psychic soldiers, from. They're hilarious together.
TMWSAG attempts to do what Burn After Reading did so well, which was use absurdity in fiction to point out truth in real life. It's not quite as successful, though, even though I thoroughly enjoyed most of it. Some parts are hilariously funny, if you have a suitable sense of humor, but that aspect of the movie was so much more interesting to me than the overall statement about war and the military that was being made, that I became annoyed when the latter was focused on more than the former.
I loved the overall idea and loved the cast, but the movie as a whole was just a little too muddled and inconsistent. Nice to see Rebecca Mader in a small role, though.