Good Morning, Vietnam

(Barry Levinson, USA, 1987)

Good Morning, Vietnam is, for all intents and purposes, an American High School movie.

Radio DJ Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams, in one of his most annoying parts) is a big, rebellious kid who shocks the staid elders that run the army base in Vietnam – meanwhile managing to win the heart of every man, woman and child in earshot.

Director Barry Levinson fakes a few moments of critical detachment from this grotesque, so-called hero – almost an impossibility when Williams takes over a movie with his relentless schtick.

Sadly, it is easy to tell that the film's sympathies lie more with the WASPs than with the oppressed Vietnamese people.

A briefly faddish, now rightly forgotten film.

MORE Levinson: Disclosure, Rain Man, Sleepers, Wag the Dog, Tin Men

© Adrian Martin October 1990