Anyone seen 'The Men Who Stare At Goats' as it is now on at my local Cinema.

I did, last friday - it was okay>bad, some funny spots. My wife liked it better than I did, but mostly I think she liked getting out of the bunker I mean house together.

Is it really based on something that happened? Or is it a fictional comedy?

The TV ads left me wondering ... but not enough to go see it.

I think the film is based loosely on the folks who were in the British Channel 4 Documentary called 'Crazy Rulers of the World' from around 2004.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbXKuwzwfxE

Supposedly based on someone's book that includes elements of non-fiction, meaning there has been military experiments with the paranormal, LSD etc, though I can't say whether it actually all dovetailed together post-Viet Nam and in Iraq as the movie lays it out. George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Stephen Lang, Stephen Root for godsakes - it should have been funnier than it is. I think Ewan MacGregor was weak in this - whoever edited the trailer has better comedic timing imo.

Sometimes reality isn't funny enough...

I can state with full certainty that a unit of this type did exist in the US Army. I was involved in the court-martial of a former member of a "Remote viewing" project.

If you google "David Morehouse" you can read all the court-martial. A Lieutenant Colonel from my Brigade was tasked as an investigating officer for then Major Morehouse's pending court-martial . I was tasked to be the bailiff/general gofer for the proceedings as I had the necessary clearance. I imagine some of the stuff that I heard may still be classified so I won't go into it. Morehouse and/or his attorney brought into question a lot of stuff about the remote viewing unit though.

Things were always interesting in the 82d.

The ladies like to get out of the house, and seeing Cluney seems to make a lot of their hearts go pitter-pat. Most of the reviewers claimed it was uneven but funny in spots. I figured it is worth the cost of a discount evening show.

Years ago I was reading a book about the US intelligence effort and the authors two paragraph assessment of the remote viewing and other exotic research was that the US projects were 'me-to' programs that started after the US found out the Russians were messing around with similar long-shot efforts. Word gets out they were doing it and our people start worrying about a 'psychic gap'.

The writer's estimate was that it was all bunk. All the positive results seemed to be of the same sort any cold-read con artist could come up with. That the practitioners thought they were getting real results doesn't change the vacuous nature of the results.

Come on folks, a joke about a Jedi Knight with a straight faced Ewan McGregor? That's funny stuff...

Seriously, I like what Mr.Clooney and his friends do when it comes to making movies, (the really bad "Ocean's Whatever" excepted), but from what I've read, this one doesn't quite make the grade.

So rent "3 Kings" with a double feature of "Oh Brother, where art Thou...?" instead.

Haven't seen it, doesn't look very good. Maybe they should have made a movie about the " gay bomb " project, a bomb filled with pheromones to make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to eachother. No I'm not making that up.