Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Good Morning Vietnam (1987)
Director: Barry Levinson
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
As US Armed Forces Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer, dumped in Saigon, in '65, Williams reveals how easy it is to hang a slim, bathetic idea on a virtuoso performance. Cronauer is your archetypal all-American anti-hero, an achingly funny, irreverent motormouth with a taste for hot soul and a subversive vision of the Vietnam conflict as a mad Wizard of Oz scenario which enrages the top brass as inevitably as it boosts the morale of the grunts. Williams' rendition of the broadcasting sequences is terrific, as speedily inventive as the comic's finest stand-up moments, even though Levinson has an irritating habit of cutting away to Cronauer's colleagues and audience cracking up, simply to show that the guy's funny. But the story itself is bunk. Besides the DJ's heroic set-to with petty-minded superiors, there's a crass romance with a shy young Vietnamese, and a friendship with her brother, which allows our fine liberal protagonist to play great white god to the gooks. Offering only hackneyed insights into the war, the film makes for stodgy drama. But Williams' manic monologues behind the mike are worth anybody's money.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Barry Levinson
Producer: Mark Johnson, Larry Brezner
Cast: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Tung Thanh Tran, Chintara Sukapatana, Bruno Kirby, Robert Wuhl, JT Walsh, Noble Willingham full cast
Genre(s): Comedy
Duration: 108 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now