2024 is the year of chronicles apparently. Now The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022): features a “boom, Chickie boom” Vietnam beer run. Like The Long Game (2023) this movie is also a love story of sorts. And the incredible part is that this version of Chickie Donohue’s 8 week trip is entertaining. This really was the best beer run ever.
The story
The year is 1967. Vietnam is still going full blast. Chickie Donohue is back home hanging out in the neighbourhood bar with his friends. He decides, while drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon lager, to go on a beer run. To Nam.
He has childhood friends who are there and he hops a Merchant Marine vessel. Chickie finds out that the war and his friends are different. He also learns the truth about the futility of this campaign.
The Cast
Zac Efron is Chickie. A clueless guy who has a big heart. His journey is interesting and remarkable. Going to war in his New York duds leads everyone to believe he is CIA.
Russell Crowe is Arthur Coates, a grizzled war correspondent who lends Chickie a hand when he needs it.
The Buddies
Jake Picking is Rick Duggan.
Kyle Allen is Bobby Pappas.
Archie Renaux is Tom Collins. *Side note: Who the heck names their kid after a cocktail?*
Will Ropp is Kevin McLoone.
Will Hochman is Tommy Minogue.
And a good sized Cameo
Bill Murray is the local barkeep, “The Colonel.”
Kudos to
Matt Cook as the equally clueless Lt. Habershaw. Cook kills it in this minute role. His character is so desperate to get into the CIA he overlooks Chickie’s own clueless nature. Just brilliant. #nosmallparts
It Works
The Greatest Beer Run Ever works. It should not, but it does. Taiwan looks enough like Vietnam that we never question the locality of the place. Everyone, from the buddies he brings the brews for to the correspondent who steps in, feels…right.
Crowe proves once again that he can take on an off kilter part and knock it out of the park. His anger management problems being controlled, apparently, makes him an even better actor. He is slowly becoming a favourite of mine and that is saying something.
Efron too knocks his simplistic character, only in his world view, out of the park. Chickie starts out pretty clueless, but he learns a lot on his beer run.
Peter Farrelly, without his brother this time, wrote the tale with two other scribes. Brian Hayes Currie and Pete Jones also added to the fun. The screenplay is based on the book by Chick and J.T. Molloy.
Just like The The Long Game it is based upon a true, however unlikely, story. The film has “before” and after pictures at the end. All the people were real and the buddies who survived the war still get together. That is the love I’m talking about here.
The Verdict
3.5 stars for The Greatest Beer Run Ever. It is solid entertainment. Like a wiseman once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” He was right.
Farrelly puts this all together well. Editor Patrick J. Don Vito snaps all the pieces of this puzzle in the right place. Cinematographer Sean Porter makes every frame count. Composer Dave Palmer and Casting Director Rick Montgomery can both hold their heads high for this one.
You can see the film on AppleTV Plus. It is an exclusive stream at the moment after the cinema run.
*Side note: Crowe’s “look” as the correspondent Coates made me think of a real life war photographer I met a number of times in LA, an entire lifetime ago, circa 1978. Fascinating man but I cannot remember his name.
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