Good Morning, Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam was an enormous hit in its day and made a big screen star out of Robin Williams,something for which we have nothing to thank it.  That it remains a much-loved film still today is a bit of mystery but would seem depend on the blind appeal to Americans of Willams’s unique brand of improvisational irreverence, crazy impersonations, and “little guy” sentimentality, a combination that is regarded Stateside as near-genius. “Blind” particularly because although we do get a lot of Williams doing his thing, it is hardly the comedian at his best. Rather it tends to be a lot of yelling into a microphone and  M.A.S.H. style ragging-the-Army humour

Based on a true story, Williams plays disc jockey Adrian Cronauer who in 1965 is assigned to take over the AFR's Saigon radio broadcasts. Instead of playing by the book, Cronauer immediately starts playing rock and pop records and mocking the military, much to the frustration of his immediate superiors, Lt. Hauk (Bruno Kirby) and Sgt-Major Dickerson (J.T. Walsh) as in the background the conflict escalates

It is particularly in this respect that the film is wanting. There is a climactic scene late in movie when Cronauer discovers that a Vietnamese boy that he befriended is a V.C. informer and he is confronted with the unpalatable idea that the Americans are invaders but this accounts for about 2 minutes of running time and in general the Yanks are largely presented as a bunch of clean-cut, fun-loving guys who like surf music, with any violence being perpetrated by the V.C.

There is also good ground for finding the film culturally patronizing, not because that was a given in 1965 but because Levinson and his team thought it O.K. in 1987. Watching Willams teach a class of Vietnamese how to jive talk NYC style is frankly embarrassing. The film itself has the flat, overly-neat look of a telemovie complete with a chaste cross-cultural romance between Cronauer and a svelte maiden, and lots quaintly exotic locals.

All up, if you're not madly keen on Williams, forget it

 

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