The Greatest Beer Run Ever tells the apparently true story (details leave me dubious) about a local neighborhood fella who has friends fighting (and dying) in Vietnam. It’s 1967 and the antiwar movement is dividing families so he decides to pack up a duffel full of beer and ship himself out to Vietnam. Time to say thanks and share some brewskis with the GIs.

This film is deceptive and confounding on multiple levels. It puts on a cloak of golly gee fun with that title and the advertising but is, of course, an antiwar movie. It takes the bold stance, about fifty years later, that the Vietnam War was bad, mkay? Yeah movie, most of us already know that. We’ve seen Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and a dozen other movies.

But, hey, I say to myself… not everyone’s seen those movies. Maybe this flick is intended to teach Gen Z that Vietnam was bad. I’m not sure they wouldn’t just ingest that message through pop culture osmosis… but every movie is someone’s first movie so maybe it’s ok. Maybe I shouldn’t be this cynical?

The movie is still confounding though. Most of us (discounting my theoretical young viewers) can figure out that the guy’s adventures in ‘Nam are not going to go as well as he thinks. But what kind of thundering chowderhead ever thought this plan would go well in the first place? And the more it wallows in these “amazing” revelations that, y’know, maybe war really is hell, the more it just kind of feels like an insufferable lecture.

And yet I can’t deny the final half hour or so was pretty strong… once they stop pussyfooting around the idea that maybe, like, war is just a matter of opinion, man. This segment it still a solid, chaotic piece of film making. And it allowed me to gently, somewhat forgive the rest of the film.

I’m probably grading this too highly, but I think the movie – despite suffering from a brain drain of a script – is ultimately on the side of the angels. I should give it a little slack since not everyone is jaded, seen-it-all curmudgeon. Maybe this will be profound to someone. And, even if it not, they still did solid work… even if they trip over a couple landmines on the way.

Score: 82