The Men Who Stare at Goats has had a lot of hype surrounding it. Since the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, most if not all reviews have been very positive. The excitement surrounding this film was not only viewer-generated but also pushed very hard by the production company, Overture Films. While hype can make a film that much better, in this case it detracted from what turned out to be a pretty good movie. While the film contained humor, superb acting and a memorable story, it just couldn't live up to the level of expectations it set for itself.The Men Who Stare at Goats follows a journalist named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) trying to find the story of his lifetime after a series of unfortunate events disrupts the order that kept him happy and satisfied with his simple life in Ann Arbor, Mich. In his despair, he travels to Iraq and meets the man who will give him this big story, Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney), an ex-soldier in the U.S. army's First Earth Battalion -a secret government-funded operation from the '80s that focused on nonwarfare techniques such as invisibility (later refined to "finding a way to not be seen"), the "starry eyes" look (a glossy-eyed puppy dog face), walking through walls and killing goats with your mind. The movement was started by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who, after almost dying in the Vietnam War, convinced the U.S. government that new age peaceful tactics could be just as effective as violent warfare. The story of the First Earth Battalion and its crazy techniques are interspersed with the main plotline of Bob following Lyn on a mysterious mission in Iraq and Lyn trying to teach Bob to have faith in the ways of the Jedi Warrior (the self-appointed name of the soldiers). The irony of Ewan McGregor learning to embrace his Jedi spirit (he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes 1-3) adds a nice inside joke. The two plotlines meet up at the end of the film in a very hilarious and satisfying second-to-last scene.

Going into the movie one expects a laugh-out-loud comedy with lots of quick-witted jokes, but instead the film is slower, focusing a lot more on the plot than the humor. The humor almost writes itself in the almost too-ridiculous situations, such as a scene that consists of an entire army base's breakfast of scrambled eggs being spiked with LSD and the subsequent reactions that occur. Though right away the film says, "The events in this film [are] based on more truth than you would believe," one really feels the need to suspend disbelief for large parts of the film and go along with the ridiculousness of the plotline.

What I really enjoyed about the film were the performances. George Clooney stands out here in one of his best performances in a while. He manages to balance his strengths as a smooth talker and comedian to create a likable character that the audience can cheer for. It is no surprise that Ewan McGregor's character follows him into Iraq. Clooney looks very natural in his role and plays it with ease. While this can partly be attributed to his talent as an actor, his relationship with director Grant Heslov, who worked with Clooney as the writer of the acclaimed 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck, clearly helped produce the excellent performance seen in the film.

Jeff Bridges plays his character very well in what appears to be a mature homage to his role of "The Dude" in the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski. His unconventional new age techniques (the first training session involved spontaneous dancing) and his emotional authenticity (when he takes a burden for his men around the middle of the film) created a well-developed character that the audience was laughing at and with almost the entire film.

Kevin Spacey, though vastly underutilized in the first half of the film, works well as the antagonist Larry Hooper. His goal of being the best creates an interesting dynamic when the plotlines of the past and present collide. The only character I didn't find to be very authentic was Ewan McGregor's. After meeting Clooney early on, his character seems very bland and predictable on the path of nonbeliever to believer that has been produced in so many films before. McGregor did the best he could have with his role, and the performance was well acted, but Bob Wilson the character just wasn't fleshed out enough.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a pretty funny film with a goofy (and a little concerning if it is, in fact, as true as it says it is) plotline and fairly likeable characters. The pacing is a little slow at parts and the last scene does leave a little more to be desired, but in his first big feature film as director, Grant Heslov and his all-star cast create a movie that is worth seeing.