The only celebrity death that ever truly impacted me was Brodie Lee’s, and that was less because of my fandom of him as a wrestler and more about the aftermath of his passing and what his contemporaries had to say about him. And sometimes I feel bad about that. But I have a hard time getting my sadness going for people I have never personally known. I’m just not good at it. It’s unfortunate when someone of public stature passes, but it doesn’t make me sad.

Robin Williams, though… his passing even hit me as direly unfortunate. He was such a fixture of my life growing up, with some of my favorite movies ever starring him. My step-dad would quote him and his films endlessly, and I remember renting a stand-up special of the comedian when we were on a road trip together for my step-dad’s job and watching it.

To see that the seemingly ever-joyful comic struggled with the same dark issues that affect millions was a light on a serious problem in American, and I think that we all wished we could have helped him out of the shadows when we heard about his passing.

Good Morning Vietnam is one of Robin’s more popular flicks that I had missed out on growing up. To be fair, it released when I was just six years old, and all I watched at that age was cartoons and deeply inappropriate horror franchises. I wasn’t quite into war-comedies.

In the movie, Robin plays Adrian Cronauer, a military disc jockey who is transferred from Crete to Saigon to keep the boys in service entertained during the early days of the Vietnam War. Cronauer seems reluctant early on, but as soon as the microphone is hot, he springs to life, all boisterous energy and madcap vocal stylings.

As his tenure goes on, he draws the ire of his superiors for his musical choices and his jokes. And while dealing with them, he also tries to strike up a relationship with a pretty Vietnamese girl he meets on the street.

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Not the first movie I would have thought of when considering movies that genuinely show some of the horrors of war and the tragedy of Vietnam, but… here we are. Good Morning Vietnam displays death, betrayal, and the general unfairness of life in the service. After a generally generic opening act of ha-ha’s and humor, the film takes some darker turns while also leaning on its leading man to keep the mood from ever getting too dour.

Around the end of the first act, or maybe the halfway point of the movie, Cronauer survives a bombing attempt in a bar that the G.I.’s frequent, and we immediately shift gears as we see his helping tend to the wounded and deal with the deceased. He then goes on air and has a meltdown over the radio station censoring the account of the attack. It was an early sign in 1987 that Williams had the goods to be a lot more than a sillyman.

From there, the whole movie grows more nuanced. Cronauer’s entire personality shifts as he starts wanting to do something else, and he becomes more engaged with the boots-on-the-ground soldiers and works to become a champion for them. It’s a take on the conflict in Vietnam I didn’t really expect from a flick I anticipated being just Robin making silly sounds for my enjoyment for two hours.  

+ Barry Levinson’s direction is incredibly on-point, with the way shots are framed and the manner in which high energy scenes are frantic and shaky. He captures the fabric of every moment, and the movie perfectly conveys how you are supposed to feel at every pass. Again, going back to Up #1, I didn’t expect this movie to be so well-managed in terms of being a war story, but Levinson has the talent to make it so.

The aforementioned bombing sequence may be where Levinson’s direction is at its best. He shoots the aftermath of the attack almost guerrilla style, as if all the action is happening in real time and the cameras are capturing it live. I was so drawn into the sequence and his envisioning of it. My heart rate went up watching the horror unfold. He absolutely had me in that moment, and I love when a film can get to me like that.

– Honestly, I was kind of on Cronauer’s boss’ side. I LOVE Robin Williams typically, and he’s one of the greatest comics of all time, but his riffing and dialogue weren’t that funny here. He’s more obnoxious than hilarious. I’ve never been much of a morning radio guy, though, so maybe the beats just weren’t my style of humor. And, gun to my head, I’m not sure what in these moments is different from Robin’s real stand-up–it’s all super fast-paced and has him affecting a lot of voices–but it just felt a little forced to me.

Maybe it’s because most of Williams’ other roles just let him BE funny without repeatedly and constantly TELLING me how funny he is. This movie can’t stop having other characters tell me what a riot he is, but the pudding provided no proof. No one in The Birdcage or Mrs. Doubtfire had to keep popping up and nudging the audience and going “Isn’t he hilarious?!”, but this flick kept doing it.

As I said above in the Ups: I do believe this is a stand-out Robin Williams performance. But I could name a half dozen movies easily wherein he is simply funnier.

– There is a twist late in the movie that gets Cronauer discharged from service, and it honestly feels weirdly out of place. I suppose it’s certainly A way for the movie to get to its own ending, but it felt like they wrote 90 minutes of this flick and then just needed a resolution so they threw something together to make it seem more cinematic. 

I’m not in the habit of spoiling even almost 40 year old films, so I won’t get too far into what that turn in the narrative is, but… yeah. It just felt more like a screenwriter came up with a plot twist than like something that should have naturally occurred in these characters’ lives.

OVERALL

Good Morning Vietnam is a movie that came out when America was still dealing with the open wounds of the controversial conflict, so does it have relevance to today? I’d argue that it does, what with the censorship of real news being a core facet of the feature. And Williams himself is a legend who is always on-topic. I do wish the film hadn’t tried to browbeat me with how funny he is supposed to be, but when you get out of the studio and into the world of Saigon, the movie is at its best.