Not much to see

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is an exercise in the absurd. Everything from George Clooney’s performance to the film’s supposedly true plot is almost believable – almost.

The film follows Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) as a down-on-his-luck reporter who vows to prove his journalistic merit by covering the Iraq War. He has a chance encounter with Lyn Cassady (Clooney), a “Jedi Warrior” in the Army’s psychic warrior program, which sets off a “Pineapple Express”-style romp through the desert.

How you feel about putting LSD in the water supply of a base in Iraq, stopping a goat’s heart with your mind and using the “Barney and Friends” theme song to torture insurgents will greatly affect your opinion of “The Men Who Stare at Goats.”

Like a rash of other recent movies (“Taking Woodstock,” “Pirate Radio”), “Goats” is directly aimed at aging baby boomers looking to relive parts of their youth.

It gives us the obvious hippie references, the classic-rock soundtrack and the nostalgic drug references, which leads me to wonder: Does anyone do LSD anymore?

The film’s ending would fit right into an Abbie Hoffman discourse. With enough psychedelic drugs, even war can be a total trip, dude.

The movie’s biggest problem is that it only kind of believes in itself. At some moments it’s hilarious, and at others it’s a little too earnest.

When the film actually believes that “Now, more than ever, the world needs Jedi,” it falls flat on its face. It’s this awkward blend of dark humor and hippie idealism that holds the film back from being really entertaining or even cohesive. 

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” wants to be "Catch-22" of the modern era: hilarious, touching and a tad depressing. Instead, it’s a poor mishmash of dark comedy and earnest idealism that makes the film neither edgy nor entertaining.