The oddly titled “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is such a wonderfully zany spoof that when I checked my watch at the 1-hour-20-minute mark I was certain that the 93-minute running time I’d been quoted must have been wrong. The film’s clever storyline had captivated up to the 80-minute mark and yet there seemed to be so much more story left to tell.

But then, surprisingly, the “The Men Who Stare at Goats” suddenly seemed to begin winding down. Then, at the 89-minute mark –– poof! –– it was gone, vanishing into nothingness, just like one of its characters.

Too bad. For otherwise, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is a kooky, cleverly written spoof on the inanities of war … a distant cousin of “Doctor Strangelove” or “Wag the Dog.”

It’s set during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, although much of it is told in flashback to explain how the Army began a strange experiment to employ soldiers with psychic abilities to help win the war. The experiment is part of the top-secret New Earth Army project, a New Age plan devised by Lt. Col. Bill Django (Jeff Bridges) during his hippie phase.

Django wanted to find the best and the brightest psychics and enlist them in his experimental program which he called Operation Jedi. “Could love and peace win wars?” wonders the ponytailed Django as he passes out daisies to a circle of soldiers.

Because Bridges plays Django with such a solid belief in his abilities, even when they fall flat, it’s easy to see how he has corralled some of the Army brass into giving him free rein with his New Earth Army. He gets recruits to loosen up with groovy dance steps. He tries out his death stare on goats and — son of a gun — the animal eventually keels over dead.

But the film actually opens with Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a newspaper reporter in Ann Arbor, Mich., whose personal crisis on his home front has sent him fleeing to seek the front lines in the Iraq invasion.

While waiting to become embedded with an Army unit with little chance of success, Bob accidentally runs into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who claims to be a retired member of the Army’s psychic experiment where he was one of the best and the brightest of the self-styled “Jedi Warriors.” Lyn tells the disbelieving Bob that he is a psychic spy, although he prefers the term “remote viewer,” for his ability to make himself invisible, pass through walls and see into the future, abilities that come and go, sort of like McGregor’s American accent.

Bob is astonished by Lyn’s stories, not sure whether they are true or just tall tales and yet at the time Lyn seems to be his best and probably only chance to get into the Iraqi desert and cover the war.

Clooney plays Lyn with such straight-ahead earnestness that it’s easy to see how Bob, played by McGregor in a mix of amazed disbelief and idolatry, could be mesmerized by his “sparkly eyes technique.” As Bob puts it, “I was on a mission, even if I didn’t know what kind of mission it was.” He is the foil, Sancho Panza to the wild exploits of Lyn’s Don Quixote.

What follows are a series of wacky adventures and wackier flashbacks, such as when Lyn, attempting to rescue a man who was kidnapped by terrorists, accidentally runs him over. There’s also a running gag about the bad blood between Lyn and new team member Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey), who is jealous of Lyn’s superior psychic powers and tries to backstab him at every opportunity.

The dry humor of Peter Straughan’s script, coolly played by this very strong ensemble cast under director Grant Heslov’s sure handling, makes it seem that “The Men Who Stare at Goats” is headed for some pow-bang cataclysmic ending.

So it’s doubly disappointing when the whole thing just sort of peters out. The promise of more, unfortunately, turns out to be something a lot less.

***The Men Who Stare at Goats

Starring: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey.

Rated: R, contains violence, profanity, nudity, drugs.

mjanuson@projo.com