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I think it was when Siskel & Ebert were reviewing the movie Buddy in which Rene Russo played real-life Gertrude Lintz who raised a gorilla from a baby. They said that some stories are better to read about in a magazine or book than they are to see in a movie. The Greatest Beer Run Ever is one of those movies that you could probably read and find some amusement with but Peter Farrelly, attempting to prove his Oscar-winning Green Book wasn’t a fluke, tries to make another serious movie.
The problem is that we’ve seen this movie done before and better. In November 1967, John “Chickie” Donohue was a merchant marine who was a ne’er do well 20-something who had did his service in the Marine Corps before America’s involvement in the Vietnam War began. He lives in Inwood, N.Y. with a collection of characters out of Central Casting. His father is even seen sitting at the table with a plain white shirt on as he smokes a cigarette. Chickie (Zac Efron poorly miscast) hangs around with a bunch of friends who talk in bad NYC accents.
They hang out at a local bar operated by The Colonel (Bill Murray also poorly miscast), a strict conservative who doesn’t care for the anti-war movement and seems to throw up that he was in WWII a little too much. (There were also protests back then.) He makes a comment one day that if he was able he would like to go track the servicemembers from Inwood down and give them a beer as a friendly gesture. This seems nice in theory and has the good intentions. But it’s a silly idea going into a war zone to deliver what could be consider contraband to servicemembers.
Chickie is at odds with his younger sister, Christine (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), who is a member of the anti-war protests and they get into a scuffle when Chickie shows up blowing out candles not realizing they’ve been lit for those that have fallen or been missing in action. Of course, Chickie is one of those guys who doesn’t stop and ask a question first before repeatedly making a fool of himself. Anyway, after hearing that one of the locals is MIA, he takes off on the next ship headed for Vietnam, even though it will take two months, with a duffle bag full of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans.
At port in Saigon, he gets a warm reception from Tommy Collins (Archie Renaux) an MP but a supervisor mistakes him for a “tourists” which is how they refer to the CIA. Chickie uses this misunderstanding as he gets further in country only to discover the others from Inwood aren’t too happy to see him because they’re being shot at, of course. Chickie meets a reporter, Archie Coates (Russell Crowe), who along with the other media criticize Chickie’s ignorance telling him that things are different and even their media colleagues have been killed.
Of course, being that it’s January 1968, Chickie finds himself in the middle of the Tet Offensive and witnesses a friendly Vietnamese official killed during the firefights. Earlier, he had witnessed an actual CIA agent interrogate a Vietnamese man before tossing him out of a helicopter many feet in the air. Very quickly, Chickie begins to see that this is a different war than what those back home thinking it is. Well, duh.
The problem is that Chickie presented here isn’t too likeable. He comes off as too cocky and entitled. It doesn’t help that Efron is a good 10 years older than what Chickie was at the time and it’s hard to believe he would still be living with his parents in his mid-30s during this time. Granted before the Tet Offensive, a lot of Americans had different views of the war and actually believed the media and the anti-war protestors were in the wrong. It was only after Tet and when Lyndon Johnson said he wouldn’t be running for re-election as President that Americans became more divided as many of the protestors were Vietnam vets, such as Ron Kovic.
Maybe Farrelly who co-wrote the script with Brian Currie and Pete Jones (of Project Greenlight’s Stolen Summer fame) felt they were showing just how in the dark people were but other filmmakers have done it better. I never get the feeling that Chickie realized that what he did was foolish and very dangerous. He not only put his life in danger but the lives of servicemembers. One of them, Bobby Papas (Kyle Allen), rightfully so feels a beer is a condescending gesture.
And of course, Chickie returns to the Inwood community a changed man and doesn’t see eye to eye with The Colonel and his friends, but he’s learned that Christine might have been right all along. And he lights a candle himself. I always say there is a better story here and that story is with the Coates character as a war reporter seeing the true terror and being criticized for telling the truth. What they initially sold the Vietnam War as was an attempt to stop the spread of Communism. But now, we see it was actually civil wars brought up in Vietnam and Cambodia from decades of European colonization.
What do you think? Please comment.