It is a sad truism that, quite often, great ideas on paper do not necessarily translate to great ideas in reality. I’m certain that the producers who promoted The Greatest Beer Run Ever flipped when they heard the premise: a true-to-life story about a NYC kid who wanted to do something positive about the Vietnam War so he loaded a duffel bag with beer and decided to visit all his neighborhood pals fighting in the jungles of SE Asia to give everybody a cold one.
That’s a great story. Tell me it isn’t.
Now, wait. Ponder: How does that great story translate that into a two-hour film?
You see the dilemma, right?
When you make this story into a movie, the movie has to be about something. What’s the movie about? Because if all you have is a guy going to Vietnam and giving his buds a Bud, that really isn’t much of a movie. Seriously. I mean you can have your protagonist encounter logistical and transportation issues (and the film does), but “hey, buddy, it’s me. Have a brewski” is really more of a commercial than a feature-length film, like when you see GIs return to surprise their families. You gotta fill in the gaps with background and personality and war. And no decent film about war gets away without commenting on both the human condition that makes war a thing and the cost of human life.
So now you have a war film when you just wanted to make a beer commercial. Your story has gotten out of control and nobody’s even started to write the screenplay.
John “Chickie” Donohue (Zac Efron) is an inner-city joke. He’s too old to be a kid, but far, far too young to be useless. Chickie spends his evenings leeching beers off friends and his days sleeping off hangovers. He is very pro-war. It is 1967 and America is becoming wholly aware of the futility of engagement in Vietnam. What does American freedom have to do with a tiny country is SE Asia? Chickie’s sister Christine (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) opposes the war vehemently. When Chickie is awake, the two fight. A lot.
Challenged by insecurity and impotence, Chickie boasts that maybe he can do something “for the boys” … i.e. their neighborhood companions currently serving in Vietnam. He proposes bringing each neighborhood kid a beer, an American beer, from NYC, twelve thousand nautical miles away, to Vietnam. Turns out Chickie is in the merchant marine and can easily book free passage to Vietnam. I think my favorite scene in the film is when Chickie gets cold feet and goes down to the merchant marine office only to discover there is indeed a boat leaving for Vietnam immediately and it is in indeed in need off someone with his exact skill set. The expression on Efron’s face when he realizes he’s suddenly run out of excuses is priceless.
Now that is a great story, no? OK, it is, but what does Chickie do when he’s in Vietnam? The boys aren’t just sitting on a dock in Saigon waiting for him … nor is there an A Train uptown to the war. Are you sure you thought this one through, Mr. Donohue?
One of the clever –and then double-edged- subplots
in the film involves the fact that Chickie’s civilian status is often mistaken for CIA … cuz who else would be in Vietnam? This leads to some very weird places.
In many ways, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a liberal fantasy. Confronted with stark reality, the conservative pro-war guy is forced to adjust his opinion on the presentation of the war and perhaps the war itself. What’s that? Confronted with facts, a hard-line conservative bends? NO! Of course, a fantasy is exactly what that is. While the situation might echo where we are right now as a nation, the current American right wing is embodied by people like Ginny Thomas – the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who, while armed with zero (0) relevant facts and over sixty (60) COURT CASES dismissed for lack of factual evidence, still believes –impossibly- that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump … and has, unfortunately, used her massive influence to get important people to do something about it. This is a woman who ought to know better, who has every reason to know better, who for the good of the country NEEDS to know better, and doesn’t … if Ginny remains a tool, how can we possibly expect enlightenment of those who have no reason to know better?
I found this film watchable. It wasn’t quite “entertaining;” it was a tad predictable, a tad tedious, and occasionally uplifting. We want Chickie to succeed, however, his success at this incredibly stupid and puerile task sometimes puts lives at risk, which is a tad unforgivable. I don’t expect anybody to come from the picture with the “good vibes” feel the one-sentence bio gives, nor do I expect those who most want to see the film to change their position on war, which is where the picture wants to go. Hence, I’m calling The Greatest Beer Run Ever satisfactory entertainment and a strategic whiff.
There once was a loser called Chickie
Who encountered a jam most sticky
He traveled to Nam
To be “the bomb”
But found exiting infinitely more tricky
Rated R, 126 Minutes
Director: Peter Farrelly
Writer: Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly, Pete Jones
Genre: War with twist. Check that. War with a poptop
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Vietnam vets
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People frustrated that an idea isn’t a movie
