Based on the book by Joanna Molloy and John “Chickie” Donohue, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” tells the latter’s true story of a misguided delivery to an active international conflict, where he learned, “Yes, Vietnam was bad.” We meet Chickie (a miscast Zac Efron) in New York City in 1967, aimless enough that his dad gives him a hard time for sleeping in and lacking motivation. He spends most of his time at the bar with his buddies, even as they watch friends go off to Vietnam and never come home again. When one of his closest allies goes M.I.A., Chickie has a crazy idea one drunken evening—what if he brought all of his buddies a beer? Just to show them that NYC still loves them? Egged on by fellow barmates, including a proprietor played by a speechifying Bill Murray, Chickie decides to get on a cargo ship headed to ‘Nam to find the guys. All he has to do is spend two months on a ship, find people he knows in a large country in the middle of a war, give them some encouraging suds, and find his way home again. No problem, right?
Chickie fights with his sister (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) over the at-home response to the war, arguing that protests diminish the sacrifice of the men on the ground. And he says directly to press members he meets in Vietnam, including one played by Russell Crowe named Arthur Coates, that they’re only reporting on the bad stuff from the war. He’s there to bring some light to a dark situation, and to remind the boys that they’re supported. Of course, anyone who’s seen a movie or read a book understands that Chickie is going to learn a harsh lesson about the truth of actual war while he’s on his beer run, and here’s where Farrelly’s limited range as a filmmaker becomes a significant problem.
Someone says about Chickie, “Every once in a while, you run into a guy who’s too dumb to get killed.” It’s meant to be a humorous line, but it reveals the foundational flaw of “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” in that Chickie is written and played poorly. He needs to be almost a Hal Ashby character, someone pushed through the world in a way that reflects the kind of ignorance that often keeps people alive, but he’s sketched instead as a working-class hero, a heartfelt guy who’s more courageous than stupid. That’s a tough sell. There’s a vastly superior version of this film that’s more comfortable mocking Chickie’s naïveté instead of using it for heartfelt speeches about dying friends.