The Men Who Stare at Goats is not a masterpiece. It’s a fun, light movie featuring some great actors having a good time entertaining us and the result is worth the time spent with it. In the pantheon of the comedy we’re subjected to in a given year it’s far better than most of the Happy Madison efforts and not up to something you’d get from the Coen brothers or Apatow [though he had an off year in 2009]. It is a good little flick and a nice debut for Grant Heslov.
EW gave it an F. The reviewer: Owen Gleiberman. Not that I’m surprised or anything. He’s long been about as reliable as a home invader and his publication spends more time with Michael Jackson, Twilight, and reality television than anything actually relevant. But still, he fucked up.
An F. Let’s put in perspective with a few recent movies that fared better than The Men Who Stare at Goats, a fun film that had a marketing campaign giving a goat the same amount of advertising space as Hollywood megastars.
The Boondock Saints II: The movie got a D. Now I’ve not seen this film because the original is a fucking nightmare. I would bet good money it’s undeserving of being on the same continent as the goat flick, let alone a full point better.
Saw VI: The movie got a D. It’s a Saw movie. The best Saw movie deserves an F. That’s how good they are.
Couples Retreat. The movie got a B-. It’s dried AIDSblood and it got a better rating than the goat movie.
Tyler Perry’s __________________. He released two films this year, because he’s Lucifer. Both got far better ratings than the goat movie, and the goat movie didn’t shit on dozens of years of great work by black filmmakers.
Halloween II. Rob Zombie put a death row shiv into the ballsack of John Carpenter’s classic and got a C+ to The Men Who Stare at Goats‘ F.
Shorts. The most annoying trailer from one of the most head-scratchingly mediocre directors out there got a far better review than the goat film.
Pandorum. A horrible, horrible movie. Better review than the goat movie.
I could go on…
There has to be an agenda here. There’s no way on Earth the goat movie is in the ballpark of any of the terrible movies mentioned above. There simply HAS to be an agenda. No reviewer could be this off the mark and this poor about explaining why he hated the movie. Makes me wonder, since EW is already really difficult to find in most retail outlets, why not trim the staff a little of some of the dead weight?
Here is a sampling of movies EW has given an F to. I also have highlighted in RED the ones they really fucked up. Oh and aside, they gave Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a D-. Cocksuckers.
8 Heads in a Duffel Bag
88 Minutes
Alone in the Dark
Brenda Starr
Balls of Fury
Drop Dead Fred
Femme Fatale
Joe Versus the Volcano
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
Saving Silverman
Surviving Christmas
Wing Commander
None of those movies deserve to be compared equally to The Men Who Stare at Goats. Not even by a longshot.
These good to great movies got an F from this magazine:
The Exorcist III
A Life Less Ordinary
Navy Seals
Night Watch (2006)
O’ Brother Where Art Thou?
Wow.
So what I’m saying is, continue doing exactly what you’ve been doing, attaching absolutely no significance at all to the reviews in EW.