Directed by Peter Farrelly
Written by Peter Farrelly, Peter Currie, Pete Jones
Starring Zac Efron, Russell Crowe, Viggo Mortensen, Bill Murray
Release Date September 30th, 2022
Apple TV
Leave it to Peter Farrelly to take a great story and pull its teeth. In fairness, he was awarded a Best Picture statue for doing just that to the life of Jazz music legend Don Shirley and his longtime friend Nick Vallelonga. There however, Vallelonga takes much of the blame for the mediocrity. It was Vallelonga who wrote the self-serving screenplay, much at the expense of the story of Shirley which was lost amid the eye-rolling, uplifting pap in Vallelonga's script and Farrelly's bland direction. Of course it won Best Picture, Hollywood loves to reward uplifting pap.
The proof of concept for my theory about Farrelly being the go-to director for taking a good story and rendering it supremely mediocre however, comes with his latest directorial effort, The Greatest Beer Run Ever. Here we have a story so insane, so unbelievable, it should make an amazing movie. The true story has a guy from New Jersey deciding that he's going to take cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon to his buddies fighting in Vietnam in 1967. John 'Chickie' Donahue really did this! It's impossible to believe right? It should be an amazing movie.
Sadly, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is directed by Peter Farrelly, a director whose movies could be sold as baby-proof for their remarkable lack of hard edges. That's not to say that Farrelly's movies aren't controversial, rather they are controversial for all the wrong reasons. Green Book is an almost complete fabrication, a vile white washing of the life of Don Shirley in favor of burnishing the egotistical legend of Nick Vallelonga. Similarly, The Greatest Beer Run of All Time should be a sharp elbowed rebuke of America's involvement in Vietnam. Instead, it's a soft headed comedy about friendship and bravery, tempered with being sad for a few people who didn't come home.
Chickie Donahue (Zac Efron) is beloved in his small New Jersey neighborhood though not so much at home. A Merchant Marine by trade, Chickie tends to only work when he feels like it and spends most nights getting drunk in a bar owned by The Colonel (Bill Murray). Chickie and his buddies are former military men who went through Korea as kids while the specter of World War 2 hangs over the heads. While at the bar watching brutal footage of the war in Vietnam on the news, Chickie and his friends are upset that the media only shows the horror and seems to dismiss the soldiers who are fighting and dying.
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