The Men Who Stare at Goats

I went into this expecting to see a bit of a screwball comedy, what I ended up seeing was what I think was meant to be an anti war film - although I don't believe it worked as well as it could have done.

Allow me to explain. The title of this film, the subject matter, the trailers and everything I have seen about it have led me to believe that this was going to be some kind of comedy set in military intelligence. There is a lot of comedy in the film, but rather than being played purely for laughs the film is more of a parody of the crazy things that the military have spent money on. From Star Wars to ultra sound weapon systems, the military have invested ludicrous amounts of money in silly things – so why not a bunch of hippies who want to turn themselves into Jedi warriors?

All well and good so far. There's nothing wrong with a film that's trying to poke fun at the military. The trouble is that the film didn't really work as a satire. I think that this was because the jokes it was making were a little too outlandish to ever be anchored in reality. Its minor successes – for example the Iraqi man who is being driven insane in solitary confinement by music, or the two private armies shooting at each other – are fleeting and overwhelmed by the rather silly plot involving goats and hippies.

One of my favourite books of all time is 'Catch 22'. This is a book that analyses the insanity of war by presenting an insane system in which combatants work out that they are better off attacking their own side and commanders are spectacularly incompetent. In a way 'The men who stare a goats' is trying to be like that – demonstrating the stupidity of war by presenting the military in a farcical way – but fails because it never gets to the crux of what war is. 'Catch 22' takes a long time to set itself up, but when the horror of war is finally visited it is in the most terrifying and visceral way – a series of events that drive the main characters into hell. This never happens in 'The men who stare at goats', at the end I was left wondering if I was supposed to be thinking about the insanity of war or laughing at the (rather funny) jokes. It would have been nice to be able to do both, but they didn't quite mix.

Also, Ewan McGregor's American accent is terrible.