Goats don’t often have the same kind of stardom that you might expect from a famous horse.
Goats are humbler creatures, but they’ve nonetheless played just as big a role in our history as most other domesticated animals.
There are endless movies starring famous horses or dogs, or about these animals more generally—but what about goats?
There are more movies about or starring goats than you might think.
Today, we’re going to look at some of the moments when goats shone in Hollywood.
Let’s get started.
Tulpan (2008)
For our first movie, we move over to the desert steppes of Kazakhstan for director Sergey Dvortsevoy’s feature directorial debut.
Our main character, Asa, dreams of marrying the only eligible girl in his small, remote village.
He lives in a yurt with the family of his sister—her husband and their children.
Tulpan is that girl, the only single girl in the area, and over the course of the film, we see the hope of their relationship bloom.
Against this backdrop, Asa must struggle with the life of a goat farmer.
He has challenges with the birth of new goats, many being stillborn and causing him to struggle financially.
This movie is a totally charming look at the kind of life we aren’t often exposed to.
It’s gut-wrenchingly real, charming and funny, and won the top prize for the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes film festival.
It has been compared to the novels of John Steinbeck, in its slice-of-life style.
If you are looking for a real movie about the life of a goat herder, this could be the one for you.
Goats (2012)
Our next movie keeps us grounded in the real world, with David Duchovny of X-Files fame starring as the wild and extremely rugged-looking Goat Man.
The film tells the story of a young man named Ellis, who is making preparations to leave his hometown of Tucson to start out at a prep school.
We see how Ellis deals with separating from his mother, and the only real father figure in his life: David Duchovny’s Goat Man.
Ellis’s life has been somewhat cushy, living in luxury with his new-age mother.
But he gets the more natural and rugged side of life out of his wild-man father figure.
This is a funny and touching tale of a young man dealing with separation and features a lot of goats along the way.
Goats are and always have been an important part of the Arizona farming life, and it’s fantastic to see Duchovny playing off the goats as well as the other actors.
Check out Goats whenever you can—you won’t regret it!
The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009)
Moving to something a bit more unusual now, we have Grant Heslov’s dark comedy, The Men Who Stare at Goats.
It features a star-studded cast, with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor and many others who instantly sell the film on name power alone.
And while the film is not literally all about goats, they do feature heavily—as the name implies.
The film tracks the reporter who stumbles upon what may be the story of a lifetime, when he meets someone claiming to have been part of a new, secret subset of the military which is seeking to employ paranormal powers in war efforts
It’s an amazingly funny movie, and every member of the cast has such incredibly chemistry that it’s really easy to get completely lost and immersed in the world it creates.
And the tagline? “No goats. No glory.”
Which I think is something we can all agree on—there should be more goats in movies, and The Men Who Stare at Goats is a great one!
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Moving even further from reality now, we have the culmination of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy.
The Battle of the Five Armies is the third instalment in the epic adaptation of the original novel from 1937 by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jackson takes a number of liberties with his source material.
For our purposes, Jackson has the Dwarven armies which arrive at the end riding goat mounts into battle.
If you aren’t aware, The Hobbit tells the story of Bilbo Baggins going on an adventure with a troupe of Dwarves, and ultimately getting into a lot of trouble along the way.
Jackson’s adaptation is a sweeping epic, and it is made all the better by the inclusion of our four-legged friends.
You might need to watch the whole trilogy to have a sense of what’s going on, but it’s well worth it!
Home on the Range (2004)
Finally, we have something a bit humbler: Disney’s 2004 animated feature, Home on the Range.
This film is a classic from many of our childhoods and the childhoods of our now adult children, a fantastic and charming western musical featuring Jeb, an ornery and pessimistic old goat.
The animals at the range must band together and seek out a lucrative bounty in order to save their farm, and it is everything a Disney film should be: witty, funny, with incredibly catchy musical numbers and a memorable cast of characters.
If you’re looking for something to watch with the kids, this is the one!
Goats are the quieter stars of Hollywood, then.
They are around more often than we might realize, and some truly iconic characters in great movies have been goats.
From animated movies to arthouse cinema and the biggest blockbusters of recent decades, goats are a common star in lots of movies.
If you’ve been looking for a goat movie to watch, any on this list will make a great choice!
I watched ‘Home on the Range’ with my niece last weekend, and we couldn’t stop laughing at Jeb the goat!
His grumpy personality was so relatable, and his antics had us in stitches.
It’s incredible how animated goats can steal the spotlight in movies.
‘Home on the Range’ is definitely a must-watch for anyone looking for a fun family movie night!