Feels like a meal that finished with just the appetizers

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2016)

Its not new in Hollywood to present bland silliness and satire packaged with utmost seriousness, 'The Men Who Stare at Goats' comes off initially as a potential winner from this genre. While it had the necessary humor and a stellar star-cast capable of enacting that, the script neither reaches the edginess it should have nor pushes the boundary to make this movie memorable.
Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is a journalist by profession and going through a professional and personal crisis that he is so desperate to get out of. When he meets Gus Lacey (Stephen Root) and hears about the US Army's 'New Earth Army' that deals with parapsychology and psychic capabilities trained by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), he knows that he encountered the story he has been waiting for that could get him out of his crisis. He meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) by chance in Iraq and tags along with him into wilderness to cover a 'mission' in action.
George Clooney and Jeff Bridges have played goofy characters in the past - 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' and 'The Big Lebowski' respectively, a little disappointed that they don't share enough screen space. However it was more than compensated with some crackling chemistry and impeccable comic timing between McGregor and Clooney. While the writers, director and editors succeed in setting up an interesting plot taking cues from disjointed real events, the audience would be stuck in a never ending wait for the stakes to go up. Kevin Spacey does a character he has done a thousand times over and seems to have sleepwalked it. The production values are excellent all thanks to the big cast it boasts of, though the quality of humor is great, the jokes are a little too few and far to get wholesome entertainment. Though the director Grant Heslov is not new to Hollywood, it is still his debut of directing a major Hollywood feature and does a decent job.
Watch it for the satire, crackling chemistry and comic timing between Clooney and McGregor. Feels like a meal that finished with just the appetizers.