Arts & Entertainment
‘Goats’ a lightweight satire
A title card at the beginning of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” announces, “More of this is true than you would believe.” Less of it is entertaining than you would wish.
The lightweight satire, based on a nonfiction book by British journalist Jon Ronson, is a sort of New Age “Catch-22.” It recounts a period in the 1980s when senior officials in the U.S. military, the intelligence services and Washington began to believe bizarre things. The United States’ next wars would be fought with psychic powers, levitating soldiers, and spies who observed distant enemies by closing their eyes, concentrating and waiting for the visions to come. In top-secret experiments, soldiers tried to kill goats by glaring at them. True facts.
With a premise this rich — occult hoo-ha as an allegory for the insanity of war — and a cast including George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor, how could the film go wrong? Dozens of ways, actually, and it stumbles flat-footed across every single one. Episodic structure, slack tempo, a clutter of characters and shaggy-dog subplots, uneven acting and listless direction. I’d rather stare at a goat for 93 minutes.
The film’s point of view shifts unsteadily among narrators and time zones, but the main focus follows McGregor’s Bob Wilton, a small-town newspaperman who writes oddball human-interest stories. One of his assignments involves a local vet who tells “Twilight Zone” tales about a classified Army corps of “psychic warriors.” Rebounding from a failed marriage, Bob heads off to cover the early days of the second Iraq war, where he encounters Lyn Cassady (Clooney), who was named by Bob’s eccentric source as one of the Army’s clairvoyant recruits.
Lyn admits to Bob that his unit was called the “Jedi masters.” “What’s a Jedi master?” McGregor’s character asks, an Obi-Wan Kenobi meta-joke the humor-strapped script recycles a dozen times.
As Lyn and Bob infiltrate Iraq on a vague secret mission, Lyn demonstrates superpowers such as “cloud bursting,” gazing at thunderheads until they dissipate and taking credit for it. He’s less skilled at evading kidnappers or keeping his car on the road. (This is the only film I’ve seen that uses an Improvised Explosive Device for a sight gag.)
As they wander the desert, the film drifts through its story. Flashbacks introduce us to eccentric officer Bill Django (Bridges in blissful “Big Lebowski” hippie mode), who founded the bloodless psychic warfare initiative after experiencing an epiphany (or shell shock) in Vietnam. We meet the tale’s villain, nefarious Larry Hooper (Spacey), who wants to turn Django’s blissed-out, long-haired mind commandos to his own evil purposes. Spacey’s bad guy is so delighted with his own wickedness that you can’t help being tickled too.
The film comes apart in the final stretch with hokey redemptions and resolutions in place of real closure. The yarn unravels without ever identifying its satirical targets. Is it a lampoon of peace-and-love mysticism? A critique of militant war-for-profit privateers? Ultimately it’s a shapeless wad of goat cheese.
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‘She’s Out of My League’ a mild charmer
Boy-meets-girl films released in recent years have fallen into two wildly diverse categories: raunchy tales of lust, as seen in “American Pie,” or painfully bland stories (“I Love You Beth Cooper”).
“Pie” provided plenty of laughs but little romance. “Cooper” was heavy on romance but lacked humor. “She’s Out of My League” is the perfect hybrid that manages to pull at your heart and funny bone with equal force. -
UCO dancers spring onto center stage
The University of Central Oklahoma’s Kaleidoscope Dance Company will spring into a variety of dances, including a critically acclaimed and challenging contemporary ballet, at its spring concert 7:30 p.m. March 25-27 at Mitchell Hall Theater.
The spring concert includes jazz, hip-hop, modern, African and Flamenco dances, as well as the contemporary ballet “Solemn Opus: The Journey of Lost and Found.” -
‘Our Family Wedding’ induces stupor
Here’s all you need to know about “Our Family Wedding": It thinks that feeding a goat an entire bottle of Viagra is the height of hilarity.
New Yorkers Lucia and Marcus (“Ugly Betty’s” America Ferrera, Lance Gross) return to their native L.A.to announce their engagement. Slight problem: She’s Mexican-American, he’s African-American.
And their fathers — Miguel and Brad (Carlos Mencia, Forest Whitaker) — hate each other at first sight. -
‘Remember Me’ ineffective
“Remember Me” could have been called “The Many Moods of Robert Pattinson’s Hair.”
Scruffy, coiffed, combed, exploding like an M-80 in a haystack, flattened by sleep, wet from having a pot of spaghetti water dumped on him ... this young actor’s follicles are the star of the show.
Pattinson (of the “Twilight” saga, naturally) plays Tyler Hawkins, estranged from his rich, powerful and remote lawyer father (Pierce Brosnan) and living in abject squalor in a Soho apartment. He’s angry and sullen and rudely smokes in inappropriate situations. He audits classes at New York University but apparently has no ambition or goals. -
‘Green Zone’ misguided
The case has been made that the Bush Administration railroaded America into invading Iraq by ignoring evidence, facts and logic, and never considering the consequences.
With “Green Zone,” “Bourne” and “Bloody Sunday” filmmaker Paul Greengrass commits a similar sin with his film about that invasion and the search for phantom weapons of mass destruction. He has ignored inconvenient facts — and indeed the very book that the script (by Brian Helgeland) is based on — to conjure up an entertaining if sometimes risible ticking-clock thriller about what “they” didn’t want you to know in the run-up to war. -
Oklahoma History Center presents ‘Time Changes Everything’
The play “Time Changes Everything” makes its Oklahoma City debut at the Oklahoma History Center, 2401 North Laird Avenue, at 7 p.m. March 20. The two-act play features the music of Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills and the Red Dirt Rangers. The play will be performed in the Devon Energy Great Hall.
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Local actors evoke magic in Willy Wonka tale
Edmond Fine Art Institute’s annual spring children’s play, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” featured a cast of talented young thespians, many of whom appeared in the recent FAI productions “The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood” and “The Bremen Town Musicians.”
Directed by Peggy Hoshall with costume design and construction by FAI Junior Theatre Company director Susan Scott, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a story written by Roald Dahl and dramatized by Richard R. George. Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp starred in the 1971 and 2005 film versions. -
Memorial’s ‘How to Succeed’ offers Broadway finesse
Rivaling the the charm of some Broadway tour offerings at the Civic Center, Edmond Memorial High School’s musical, “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” offered a comical glimpse at corporate culture in the days of three-piece suits and steno pools.
Based on the 1952 book by Shepherd Mead, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows of “Guys and Dolls” fame, the show boasts seven Tony Awards and a 1962 Pulitzer Prize. It was released on film in 1967 and revived on Broadway in 1995 with Matthew Broderick and Megan Mullaly. - Sit, stay, teleport: Teach physics to your dog
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3-9 Good Reads: books
‘LUNCH LADY AND THE AUTHOR VISIT VENDETTA’
BY JARRETT J. KROSOCZKA
The Breakfast Bunch is back in book three of the Lunch Lady graphic novel series, which chronicles the adventures of a school lunch lady who fights crime when she’s not serving sloppy joes.
In “Lunch Lady and the Author Visit Vendetta,” Dee, Terrence and Hector are very excited about Author Visit Day. But something is not right about their special guest, Lewis Scribson, author of the famous Flippy Bunny books. - More Arts & Entertainment Headlines
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‘She’s Out of My League’ a mild charmer
