Telling the truth about this war is being supportive of our boys,” a deadpan Russell Crowe responds to an adamantly pro-military Zac Efron at Saigon’s Hotel Caravelle about the Vietnam War raging on further north. “That’s what war is, Chick. It’s one giant crime scene,” Crowe reminds Efron, in light of the horrors the latter has seen before they go their separate ways.
Statements like these form the vast majority of the dialogues that feature in Apple TV’s latest true-story film The Greatest Beer Run Ever, as nearly every conversation between the film’s characters is a broad political discussion on the unpopular Vietnam War, with sprinkles of everyman philosophy here and there.
On paper, this sounds like a disaster, riddled with clichés, shoehorned messages and thinly written characters that serve the plot in a rudimentary fashion instead of saying something deeper about one of the darkest periods of modern history. But in practice, The Greatest Beer Run Ever kind of works and keeps you engaged despite there being plenty of room for improvement.
Also read: Remakes are a tricky minefield but Saif, Hrithik’s Vikram Vedha gets it right
From the maker of Green Book
Helmed by Peter Farrelly of Oscar-winning Green Book (2018) fame and set in the year 1967, the film stars Zac Efron as John “Chickie” Donahue, a mustachioed slacker with a heavy north Manhattan accent.
Donahue is frustrated with his sister’s anti-war protests and embarks on a merchant vessel journey to Vietnam in order to track down his old neighbourhood friends and bring them some red-white-and-blue Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. But in typical war satire fashion, the real journey is the gradual evolution of Donahue’s own political outlook towards nationalism, due to the horrors of war he witnesses every step of the way.
Director Peter Farrelly has had a strange career, having started out in Hollywood making silly, lowbrow comedies with his younger brother Bobby, and bookending their first and final collaborations with Dumb and Dumber (1994) and its 2014 sequel. Although the brothers were bankable box office draws on a reasonable budget, their works rarely received critical acclaim with the exception of Cameron Diaz-starrer musical There’s Something About Mary (1998).
But fortunes changed for Peter once he branched out on his own with Green Book (2018), ditching the toilet humour for more serious historical topics and pairing up serial acting award winners Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali. Despite facing criticism from some circles for seemingly over-simplifying racial issues, Green Book clinched the Best Picture Oscar from under the nose of more fancied films and fetched Ali the Best Supporting Actor award as well as Best Original Screenplay to Peter and his co-writers.
Four years later, it seems Peter and Apple TV wanted to repeat that feat with The Greatest Beer Run ever but the two films aren’t in the same ballpark. For all his creditable efforts in capturing Donahue’s mannerisms, worldview and cadence, Efron lacks the gravitas of a Mortensen, an Ali or Catch-22 (2019) star Christopher Abbott. The limitations of the dialogue writing don’t help matters one bit either as the same one-line treatises are repeated a tad too often.
Also read: With Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde makes a fatal mistake and a hacky script lets it down
Yes, you can watch it once
Efron does make the film his own and is relatably frustrating in parts when he captures how the best things are often left unsaid, but he rarely manages to effectively express the range of emotions that the narrative needed, barring a fairly well-done vulnerable scene in the film’s final act.
The supporting cast similarly backs Efron up by making the most of their fleeting screentime, be it Crowe as photojournalist Arthur Coates, Kevin K. Tran as traffic cop Hieu, Thai-Hoa Le as bartender Hien or the large number of character actors that play US military officers.
Each of them do just about enough to elevate what was shaping up to be a very generic story that’s been done better a million times, and underpin Peter’s attempt to balance out powerful but preachy war commentary with lighter, funnier moments.
And these funnier moments are what make The Greatest Beer Run Ever accessible and good-natured, especially its lampooning of uncritical nationalism and the numerous jabs at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that will never get old in an American foreign policy context.
Given Peter’s prior success, The Greatest Beer Run Ever ultimately does not make the most of its unique true story potential and chooses to play it too straight. But if you log in to Apple TV and not expect the next Four Lions (2010) or MASH (1970), you’ll enjoy it enough to watch it more than once.