In the surprisingly thoughtful anti-war comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever, an ignorant blowhard’s neighborhood pals are serving in the Vietnam War, and he thinks he can uplift their spirits by bringing them beer. It’s a plot too idiotic to be credible – except that it really happened.
Our protagonist is Chickie (Zak Efron), a slacker ne’er-do-well (although we didn’t call them slackers back then) who has the intellectual curiosity of a stump. Offended by non-rah rah media coverage of the Vietnam War and by the burgeoning anti-war protest movement, he thinks a simplistic gesture is in order. As a merchant marine, he actually has means to GET TO Vietnam – by signing on a freighter. So, off he goes, with a duffel packed with cans of beer.
Once he is on the ground in country, of course, he sees that press is accurately reporting that the war is not going well and that the LBJ Administration and the military commanders are indeed lying about it. He learns that not all Vietnamese welcome Americans. And that war is very, very dangerous and very, very scary. Nor do his pals all welcome his crazy stunt.
A lesser director could have made this film as an empty-headed Bro comedy, only about the stunt itself. But Peter Farrelly, as he did with the Oscar-winning Green Book, has made an entertaining movie about a serious human experience.
And give Farrelly credit for something rarely seen in a Hollywood Vietnam War movie – Vietnamese characters are more than cardboard cutouts. Chickie has interactions with a goofy traffic cop, a savvy bartender and, most stirringly, a peasant mother and her young daughter in the countryside. The carnage and grieving among Vietnamese of all persuasions is depicted, too.
That being said, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a very funny film, with most of the humor stemming from Chickie’s dunderheadness and the military characters all assuming that an American civilian asking for a helicopter ride into a combat zone MUST be CIA.
The very underrated Zak Efron carries the movie as Chickie gets force fed a life-changing reality check. Russell Crowe is excellent as a world-weary war correspondent. Bill Murray, without a single wink at the camera, is perfect as the lads’ bar owner, a WW II vet who just doesn’t get it. Matt Cook is very funny as a junior Army officer who idolizes the CIA.
Make sure you watch the closing credits.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever is streaming on AppleTV.