Supposedly based on a true story, or so a title card reads, "The Men Who Stare At Goats" is about a secret United States military study involving mind control and barnyard animals. The premise is inspired lunacy, and the overall approach to this tall tale is demented fun.
Ewan McGregor is a disenchanted newspaper reporter in Ann Arbor, Mich., whose wife leaves him for his one-armed editor. Determined to find a career-enhancing story, McGregor heads for the current Iraqi war zone.
While waiting in Kuwait, he encounters a mysterious George Clooney, who sells industrial things that people need. Something Clooney says reminds the reporter of an interview he once did with a man who was involved in harnessing psychic energy. A begrudging, and paranoid, Clooney decides to let McGregor ride with him to Baghdad.
During the journey, Clooney reveals information about a special project overseen by a peace-and-love military man (Jeff Bridges). He was going to create an army of supermen -- warriors without guns who would win battles with mind control.
The movie bounces back and forth between different eras in U.S. military history as Clooney and McGregor bounce along desert roads, sometimes under arrest by mysterious men, sometimes rescuing other mysterious men.
Through it all, Clooney continues to tell McGregor about the psychic games that were being played (not to mention the hot-tub parties and mood-enhancing drug use amongst the participants). These games were part of a belief system overseen by a gung-ho officer (Kevin Spacey), who was convinced that he could predict the future for newlyweds, or that a soldier who concentrates long and hard could run through a wall.
"The Men Who Stare At Goats" is directed by Grant Heslov, who is Clooney's producing partner. Heslov clearly shares Clooney's wry sense of humor, and the picture rolls along in delicious tongue-in-cheek fashion.
Peter Straughan's laugh-out-loud screenplay, from a book by Jon Ronson, creates characters of such loony delight that you often want to enter the screen and join in the hilarity.
The acting from everybody I've mentioned is as zany as zany gets. The performances never hit buffoonery. The cast definitely gets the joke. The pacing is energetic.
Was there really a group dedicated to free-love believing, long-haired, psychic-energy radiating soldiers? There are people who say there was. After all, Ronson's book is non-fiction.
True or not, Clooney and his pals have marched up to the edge and given "Catch-22," "Dr. Strangelove" and "MASH" a real run for their money. I'm thinking this is more a salute to the madcap antics of the Marx Brothers than anything else. Regardless of what you believe, it's a shaggy dog story of the highest order.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to reinvent yourself? Consider the life of a poor orphan girl named Gabrielle Chanel.
As a young woman, she ended up singing comic songs of love at a Paris dance hall and catering to horny men. She was not quite a prostitute, maybe not even a golddigger, but she was definitely a kept woman. This music hall chanteuse would grow up to be the legendary, internationally renowned fashion designer Coco Chanel.
If, that is, you believe everything thrown at you in this entertaining, but hardly substantial bit of French hooey entitled "Coco Before Chanel."
Sharing deluxe surroundings with a nice and undemanding millionaire, Gabrielle enjoys good food, a comfortable bed, and, at least according to the picture, she doesn't have to put out much.
Of course, what she really wants to do is design hats. As the film progresses, Mlle. Chanel will meet theater actresses who will help her achieve her dream of getting women out of 19th-century corsets and flowery chapeaux. For Gabrielle, things have to change because it's the 20th century, even if she's the only one who notices it. Her goal is to influence the world, make money for herself and be independent.
Yes, she did achieve these goals, but we really don't experience that in the movie, albeit briefly, because we're watching Coco before she became Chanel.
During her stay chez love nest, Gabrielle meets a very wealthy, young and handsome British industrial baron, who has something to do with coal. He's a Brit with great teeth, so you know we're really in fantasyland now. This potential heartthrob's nickname is "Boy." Trust me, he isn't a boy, but rather a hairy-chested, mustachioed hunk who drools over the hatmaker.
Eventually at a costume party (yes, it's always a costume party), Gabrielle and Boy will take special pleasure in their whimsical courtship. This is as literal an example of girl meets Boy as you may ever get. Her beating heart confuses Chanel, who is unsure what love is. She asks one of her actress hat customers to explain, and the answer is obviously what she wants to hear. She falls for Boy and accepts his offer of money to help her really get her fashion business going.
"Coco Before Chanel" is pleasing to the eye, and the leading players are very good. Audrey Tatou of "Amelie" fame is Chanel, and American-born Alessandro Nivola is Boy. Both are adorable and comfortable to watch.
The enterprise is written by Anne and Camille Fontaine, with Anne directing. They're not quite the "Coen" sisters. No hard edges here. Even the sex is playful.
It's all based on an alleged non-fiction book by Edmonde Charles-Roux.
Did Gabrielle really go down to the sea, and after watching a rugged fisherman who was wearing one of those classic striped boat shirts, start wearing one herself? Who knows?
Was Coco Chanel, who was the most influential fashion designer of her century and a major force in female independence, really a sweet and endearing wisp of coy invincibility? You got me. This movie seems to think so. But it is enjoyable in a fairy-tale sort of way.
An encounter of the first kind involves seeing a UFO. A second kind means you found evidence of the UFO. The third kind means little green men popped out of the UFO to say hello. If you've been abducted by those little men green, you've had an encounter of the fourth kind.
That's the name of the effort -- "The Fourth Kind" -- and it's done in quasi-documentary style, but filled with interview footage offered up as the real deal.
Even actress Milla Jovovich tells you at the beginning that she's only playing a part because, it seems, a movie (fictional as it is) would be the best way to tell the American people that many Alaskans have been kidnapped by aliens from another planet.
Jovovich plays a psychologist studying the kidnapped folks. She has a colleague played by Eklias Koteas, and there's a sheriff played by Will Patton, but by and large, the cast is dispensable.
Olatunde Osunsanmi wrote and directed this failed effort as if he went to IKEA, bought all the parts, and then couldn't put them together.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 10 2009 |