Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) is a journalist who is desperate to find some meaning to his life after his wife leaves him for his editor. He stumbles on Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) whilst waiting for a scoop who haplessly drags Bob through a series of events after Bob hints that he knows of the military’s involvement into psychic research. They travel to various locations, including Iraq and meet some of the proponents of the research as Bob narrates his story about trying to find the one big story of his career. Often using flashbacks, Lyn tells Bob about the New Earth Army, a US Army unit headed by Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) that was involved in psychic research and Bill’s nemesis Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey) who was constantly battling to dethrone Bill.

You know you are in for a treat when the opening scene of a movie has a Major General in the military announce to his co-worker that he’s going into the next room and he then proceeds to run at full pace into the wall and bounces off it. What was he thinking? And so much of the following begs the same type of questions. Delving into psychic research is an area fraught with scepticism by some yet revered so passionately by those who believe and then add the US Army to this scenario who have a unit that is actually based on the belief that these psychic phenomenon work and you begin to understand the absurdity of the movie. The entire premise of this army unit is filled with so many outrageously ridiculous ideas that at first, it seems just too eccentric to be real but in fact there really was a unit that researched paranormal and psychic phenomenon and the men really did sometimes stare at goats in the process of ‘research’.

George Clooney is a master at the deadpan comedy and here he excels. As Lyn Cassady he flows from one luckless event to the next, in the present and during the flashback sequences, these past scenes explaining the long hair and moustaches on many of the characters. Jeff Bridges gets to be a kind of hippy-come-guru, which he has done before but that’s ok as he totally suits that kind of character and Kevin Spacey plays the scheming Larry Hooper with his usual adept skill and ease. Ewan McGregor is perhaps the odd man out in this scenario as his character is dragged along so many times into situations against his wishes but there is the greatest satirical attachment to him personally as George keeps telling Bob that their group believed they were Jedi warriors.