The Men Who Stare at Goats has two things going for it right from the get-go. First, its title is so deliciously irresistible it grabs immediate attention. Not quite as boiled-down and succinct as Snakes on a Plane, but definitely more clever. Secondly, we’re captivated by an opening title-card graphic that declares; “More of this is true than you would believe.”  In other words, the truth is about to get stranger than fiction.

But despite the film’s interesting subject matter and attention-grabbing title, there’s little left beyond its star-studded cast and a few bits of hilarious situational comedy. The cast, for the most part, does a respectable job of guiding us through this tonally uneven war-comedy, but when it’s all said and done, we can’t shake the feeling that somewhere along the line, the filmmakers lost all control of their focus and discipline.

The film is based on Jon Ronson’s 2004 nonfiction book that uncovered an experimental branch of the U.S. Military involved in trying to develop a legion of psychic soldiers or “Warrior Monks” with unparalleled supernatural powers, including reading the enemy’s thoughts, walking through walls, and even killing a goat simply by staring at it. As bizarre as it sounds, this is the true part.

Leading us through an outlandish world of psy-op circumstances is small town news reporter, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), who is young and gung-ho about imbedding with a combat unit in Iraq. But while waiting to be deployed, Wilton meets Lynn Cassady (George Clooney) who claims to be one of these psychic warriors on a special mission. Seeing his angle for an interesting story, Wilton accompanies the wild-eyed Cassady into Iraq.

Peter Straughan’s screenplay unfolds via a twisty-turny mélange of flashbacks where we see Cassady and his psychic cohorts training with their black-ops mentor, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) who spent years researching such New Age techniques as Reichian rebirthing, primal arm wrestling and naked hot tub encounters in order to revolutionize the military. These flashback segments, though sometimes a bit too silly, ironically feel less phony than the current-day thread where we follow Cassady and Wilton as they chase Django to a clandestine camp run by renegade psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey).

Director Grant Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan are clearly over their heads with The Men Who Stare at Goats, as they’re never quite able to pull all of Ronson’s original comedic farce into a cohesive marching unit. The entire experience feels like a big box of pretty, shiny parts scattered on the table waiting to be put together. Heslov and Straughan's shots at brilliant political satire are wasted at the expense of letting the actors  perform in a loopy script that thinks it’s smarter than it really is. As a result, this comedy sometimes hits big with genuine laugh-out-loud moments, but more often, it leaves us scratching our heads, wondering exactly where it all went so wrong.

(Released by Overture Films and rated “R” for language, some drug content and brief nudity.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com .