After my Google alert told me that “new age movement” had been mentioned in a half –dozen reviews of the new George Clooney comedy, “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” I headed down to the multiplex, braced for another round of mockery of the New Age. What a surprise to find a nuanced picture not only of all that is wrongheaded about the New Age, but also much that is right.

Ewan McGregor plays hapless small town reporter, Bob Wilton, with convincing wide eyes and gullibility as he sets off on an archetypal fool’s journey to prove himself with a trip to Iraq to report on the war.  He immediately runs into the mysterious Lyn Cassady, the loose and hilarious Clooney playing “one of the best psychics on the planet.”

Through entertaining flashbacks, we learn about Cassady’s glory days in the New Earth Army, a stand-in for the U.S. government’s true experiments in the paranormal.  This battalion is headed by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a true believer in the philosophy of “make love, not war,” and he is determined to use the military to spread peace throughout the world with a new breed of psychically gifted spiritual warriors, which he calls the Jedi.  (To see Ewan McGregor, the young Obi-wan Kenobi, innocently ask, What's a Jedi? -- well, that's just plain fun.) 

Alas, the New Earth Army falls prey to the excesses of the New Age movement itself,  fake psychics and jealous, egomaniac leaders like Larry Hooper, played with delicious sneering by Kevin Spacey.  Meanwhile, in the present, Wilton trails through the Iraqi desert after Cassady, who is himself trailing after his intuition on a secret mission that is admittedly a little murky.  Along its unpredictable way, the well matched pair encounter enemies and allies, and Wilton learns many lessons about appreciating the esoteric.

With a sharp and clever script and that frothy tone, the movie seems at first glance a straight romp, zipping fast through the silliness of the New Age and holisitic spirituality (Jeff Bridges soaking in hot tubs with bare-chested hippie chicks.)  But the jabs are light, in the teasing manner of a fond uncle who knows you well and helps you laugh at your own naivete.  And beneath the comedy there is a recognition of the prfound “we-are-all-one” philosophy which fuels the efforts of all us New Age-y types as we move along the path less traveled.  At movie’s end, we are left with the sense that the world very much needs more people like us.  

Go see it; you’ll leave the theater well-entertained and surprisingly uplifted.

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