There's nothing wrong with a movie being light. The Men Who Stare At Goats is light. Very light. Light as in you walk out of the theater, turn to your friend and say 'Let's get something to eat' and then never think about the movie again. It's not that the film isn't enjoyable; during its very brief runtime you will enjoy The Men Who Stare At Goats. You'll laugh at George Clooney and you'll appreciate director Grant Heslov's deadpan tone. But when you walk out of the theater the film will simply slide off of you. I actually had to take a minute to simply remember it as one of the films I've seen in the past week at Fantastic Fest.

The film is based on a book by Jon Ronson; the British journalist investigated some of the weirdest - and possibly most important - moments in recent US Army history, all centered around the New Earth Army, a hippie dippie psychic spy division. The First Earth Battalion pioneered non-lethal tactics that are in use today, invented the 'Be All You Can Be' Army catchphrase and started going down a weird path of psy-ops that finally ended up being used in the sands of Iraq, being used to torture prisoners.

Ronson's book begins very light, with an almost mocking tone about the First Earth Battalion. But as the journalist uncovered more information, the book takes a darker turn. Finally he ends up in Iraq, where he witnesses New Earth techniques being used against detainees in dark ways that were never intended - men locked in shipping containers being subjected to strobe lights and repeats of Barney the Purple Dinosaur songs 24 hours a day. When he returned home he wrote about what he saw; it caused a minor scandal but the torture, which seemed mild to outside observers, was treated as a joke by the media.

Reading the book when the movie was announced I assumed this was what had interested Clooney and Heslov. Ronson's book got fairly dark in the end, and it plays out almost like a tragedy, as the good intentions of these soldiers - who called themselves Jedi Warriors - was twisted for more evil purposes. That's a dramatically satisfying story, and it's one that peeks under the antiseptic corners of modern warfare, where we kill our enemies at a distance and where our fallen soldiers were, for a long time, undocumented on their return trips home.

But Peter Straughan, the screenwriter, mostly sidesteps those issues. They appear at the end, but without much weight. In fact, once the movie gets to the stuff that was darkest in the book it turns into a slobs vs snobs comedy with a denouement that seems straight out of a hippie version of Meatballs (Soyballs)? The film makes a mention of how the media trivialized the torture Ronson uncovered (or I should say the character standing in for Ronson, Ewan McGregor's Bob Wilton), but it feels guilty of doing the same, just not to the same degree the folks on The Today Show did. And it's this stuff that would have lent the film the heft it needed to stick with you as you walked out of the theater. It would have connected in a deeper, bigger way instead of being a pleasant diversion.

Again, there's nothing wrong with a pleasant diversion! I have no doubt that the folks behind the film are capable of much more than that should they set their minds to it. This isn't Heslov's (Clooney's longtime producing partner and the writer of Good Night, and Good Luck) feature debut, but it's been so long since his first movie you'd be forgiven for thinking so. Heslov manages the incredibly tricky job of keeping his tone from getting too silly, something that can be tough when talking about some of the more outre First Earth Battalion (renamed New Earth Army for the movie) projects and ideas. And in the end while he and Straugharn are obviously at the very least skeptical of the psychic spying work the group did, they respect the strangeness and uniqueness of the group's vision and concepts for a changed Army that rejects wholesale violence and imperialism.

It should almost go without saying that Clooney is great. He plays an amalgam of real people from the book in a completely fictional framing sequence, and he brings a delightfully unhinged feeling to the part. The magic of the casting, though, is that he also brings his Clooney-ism; while a lot of what the character is claiming - he can dissipate clouds with his minds, he once stopped the heart of a goat by staring at it - is looney in the extreme, Clooney has a natural charisma and authority that makes you buy it. That's vital for the relationship between himself and McGregor (a Scotsman playing an American based on an English character. McGregor's American accent isn't horrible, but maybe they should have just made him British), playing a small-town newspaperman who stumbles into the history of the First Earth Army as he tries to be a war correspondent in Iraq. McGregor needs to be incredulous of the claims but also taken enough to stick with Clooney's character and to continue digging into the history of the group.

The only man on Earth capable of out-cooling George Clooney was cast as the man behind the First Earth Army; Jeff Bridges plays the lightly fictionalized character of Bill Django, an Army man turned Army shaman turned broken down old drunk. The other actors look faintly ridiculous in 'young man' make up for flashbacks to the 1980s heyday of the New Earth Army, but Bridges is perfect as a younger man and as an older man. It's actually amazing how well and simply he creates the difference between different phases of Django's life; in the modern scenes Bridges appears to be genuinely bloated and unwell, while in the flashbacks he has the energy and confidence of a man half his age. I'm sure make-up played a big part in both eras, but much of the credit must go to Bridges' remarkable physical acting.

Kevin Spacey is the bad guy of the piece, a psychic spy who goes to the Dark Side. He's appropriately slimy, and he doesn't have much aging done on him beyond a hairpiece, making him seem like an evil ageless being. Spacey's actually a lot of fun; the actor has had a rough patch for the last decade or so, but when he's not making sappy pieces of failed Oscar bait he's a terrific comic actor, and he's mostly great in this film.

I really enjoyed watching The Men Who Stare At Goats. I laughed often. I had a good time in the movie theater, and I imagine that if I hadn't read Ronson's excellent book I would have learned a thing or two about a very strange period in the history of the US military (the film, while changing names and other details, maintains striking fidelity to the basic facts of history). But the film makes no impression and leaves no lasting mark. In the end it's a missed opportunity; even if Heslov hadn't wanted to get as dark as the book, had wanted to maintain his light, quirkily deadpan tone, he could have managed to find a way to give the film more heft and meaning.

7.5 out of 10