The Greatest Beer Run Ever

It's true that the dumbest ideas often come up after a few beers at the pub. This film's story is no different. Taking a pack of beers to your buddies fighting in Vietnam? Only a naive fool would think of that. But Zac Efron plays this beer-loving guy brilliantly. The whole absurd mission to boost the morale of a platoon is surprisingly fun to watch. Peter Farrelly has a knack for handling such themes, and he nails it again here. The absurd humor is interspersed with the Tet Offensive and the attack on Hanoi, featuring Russell Crowe in a fascinating role as a war photographer. His character brings a lot of profound truths and thoughts worth pondering. A genuinely good film about the self-discovery of an ordinary American. (05.04.2023)

A film about beer, on a trip to Vietnam. After Green Book, Farelly remained faithful to eccentric stories based on true events. An adventure comedy with an on-target Efron and an excellent if slightly underused Crowe. As the end draws near, it breaks down into a powerful drama about what war really is, about how poorly civilians at home understand it and why and who is actually unleashing it, a topic that is so important today. The information war where interpretations, conjectures and miscommunicated news create chaos that feeds on itself. It was a little short of a full score, but it was very close. The people running this war, they're not patriots. They're politicians. And they deal in the currency of lies. And if the lies continue, they're just gonna keep sending boys out here to be killed to justify the boys who already got killed. (16.10.2022)

Peter Farrelly is an interesting director and his Oscar-winning Green Book is one of my favourite films; it’s amazing how someone who's been around silly comedies all his life could finally make something like that and I was curious to see how he'd handle this one, but the result is mediocre. It's definitely an interesting and unconventional true story, with Zac Efron playing both a likeable guy and a fool, but there wasn't anything particularly distinctive for my taste. The humour didn't work for me at all, I didn't find it funny, visually it seemed like made-for-TV at times, and when it came to Vietnam there wasn't even any proper action. Something interesting started to happen only in the last half an hour, where the Viet Cong attack on the city didn't lack tension. At least and Russel Crowe had an interesting role again after a long time, but still, all in all, for me better average at best. 6/10 (27.11.2022)