Starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges. Rated PG. Opens Friday, November 6, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

You might not know that there’s a silly side to the military-industrial complex, but the folks behind The Men Who Stare at Goats certainly do.

The title, taken from a nonfiction book about the Pentagon dabbling in the paranormal, here describes a secret faction of the U.S. army led by enlightened Vietnam vet Bill Django (Jeff Bridges, out-duding the Big Lebowski), who believes that new-age mysticism can resolve conflict, or at least help you put out an enemy’s eye while dancing. What we know of this odd squad comes from psychically gifted former soldier Lyn Cassady (George Clooney, who also helped produce) when he reluctantly befriends a callow journalist (Ewan McGregor) in Kuwait on the eve of Iraq’s 2003 “liberation”.

According to Cassady, the army’s secret skills have gone way beyond bending spoons (there was a goat’s heart involved, after all), but his so-called superpowers come into question when he and the boy reporter cross the border and find trouble in the desert. Working from Peter Straughan’s breezy script, director Grant Heslov, best known for writing Good Night, and Good Luck. for Clooney, keeps things jumping back to earlier days, as Django’s work is gradually undone by a rival telepath played scarily by Kevin Spacey.

The filmmakers imply plenty about American “imagineering”, which somehow unites fantasies of instant democracy with the mercenary spirit of Halliburton and other lucky corporations cashing in on “year zero”, as one gun-wielding bigwig puts it. But the references are more rib-tickling than moralistic, and Goats keeps things zanily aloft—at least until a final, MASH–like sequence that eventually fizzles like a solar barbecue on a rainy day. There’s some great staring up till then, though.