"The Men Who Stare at Goats" - though they don't actually stare at goats until about an hour into the film, and only for a few minutes

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a based on the 2004 novel of the same name by Jon Ronson. Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), Gus Lacey (Stephen Root), Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), and Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) are all army men during the 2003 war in Iraq, but they don't fight for the same reasons the other soldiers do - they practice psychic "Jedi" powers, and they seem to promote peace rather than fighting. Their idea of "fighting" is to capture Iraqi soldiers and force them to watch or listen to Barney & Friends music, and they test their psychic powers by staring at goats to try to weaken or kill them.

Hmmm, that seemed a little shorter than most of my synopses... well, that's about all there is to it. There really is no plot to this film. It just seems like a bunch of skits strung together for comedy purposes. That's not saying it's not funny, but I don't want to give away too many of the funny parts. There seems to be a subplot about Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) being jealous of Lyn's ability to "stare at goats", but again, that's all I can say without spoiling, and it's really not much anyway because the only "goat-staring" takes place about an hour into the film and only lasts a few minutes.

The film scored an R rating, mostly for drug use. There is a lot of LSD and many drug references in this film, and many of the soldiers believe that drugs and alcohol are useful in battle. There's also a bit of violence, as you'd expect in a film about soldiers, but it's mostly for comedy. There's the aforementioned "goat staring" scene, people try to walk through walls and hit them instead, and just war explosions. There are guns and knives, which are used for threatening purposes, but not always for attacking (except the "death touch" which takes years to work). The only sexual content is a hot-tub with women where we briefly see bare breasts and someone saying something about "having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds".

If you just want to sit back and laugh at a film, or you believe in army men promoting peace instead of war, then by all means watch this film. If you want plot, then stay away.