Zac Efron on playing Chickie Donohue, the man who delivered beer in a warzone

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is the type of title you might anticipate from a LadBible movie, rather than a feature movie released during awards season.

Even though Apple TV’s new movie, which stars Zac Efron and Russell Crowe, might not be traditional Oscars bait, it’s worth looking beyond its relatively trivial title.

Movie director Peter Farrelly’s earlier film, Green Book, won best picture in 2019, which means there is significant interest in the story he’s selected for his latest project.

The Greatest Beer Run Actually follows the true tale of Chickie Donohue, an US sea who, in 1968, travelled across the world to deliver a crate associated with beer to their mates who were fighting in the Vietnam War.

At that time, morale among the soldiers was lower, so the New Yorker set out on a four-month journey with a (presumably very heavy) handbag of beer on his back, to lift their spirits.

Providing beer to enlisted men from your neighborhood is all fun and video games, until Donohue really gets there and is confronted with the very brutal realities of war. (One character tells him the expedition is “the dumbest thing I ever heard”. ) Donohue himself had served four yrs in the Marines, but hadn’t experienced battle.

“Tonally, it starts light, ” Farrelly told journalists earlier this month following the film’s premiere in Toronto. “The silliness of this guy endeavoring to bring a beer to his buddies in Vietnam is just nuts, and you discover him smiling, then when he gets to Vietnam the reality hits as well as the tone changes, yet it’s natural.

“It didn’t take a lot of work on the part, it required a lot of work on [Efron’s] component because he had to become a different guy as you go along. ”

Efron says: “I couldn’t believe it was a true tale, it just sounded like a very foolish idea and young and stupid. But the journey that begins there is very marvelous and profound. So it’s ended up one of the coolest gestures you can possibly make. ”

The particular tone of the film feels a little muddled, but that’s partly because the tone from the original expedition should have been the same. The backdrop of bombs, fatalities and blood container somewhat with what Donohue is trying to do.

But , Efron argues: “I love the human element you’re able to find in some of the darkest times, and there’s always something which is unique or arrives of tension that may make you laugh. inch

“What interested myself, ” Farrelly provides, “was it was a guy going into a battleground, during an react of war, to bring beer to their friends. I love that individual, the stupidity from it, the hubris, as well as the amount of heart it takes for him to want to do that, and actually draw it off. inch

Early reviews from the film have been combined. IndieWire’s Kate Erbland said Ale Run “is not a gritty war image; it’s glossy and entertaining and often fun. Farrelly has got a tale that requires both window blind faith and nutty optimism”.

But , the girl acknowledged: “For some viewers, the distance between straight-up entertainment and the Tet Offensive might be a bridge too far. ”

Various other critics were a lot less enthusiastic. The Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen called this “a meandering, sketchy production that struggles throughout to find a fulfilling tone”, while The Guardian’s Charles Bramesco accused this of “regurgitating every Vietnam cliché using the laziest possible visible diction”.

But with one best picture earn under its belt thanks to the 2021 surprise hit Coda, Apple TV+ will be hoping The Greatest Beer Run Ever is firmly on Academy voters’ radar.

For Farrelly, this marks the latest inside a long line of road trip movies – something which he says is pure coincidence.

“If a person look at all my movies, they’re almost all street trips, ” he notes. “Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, Will be certainly Something About Jane, Three Stooges, Eco-friendly Book, they’re almost all road trips, and am don’t know why which is.

“I lived in the same house for my entire life we were young, we never relocated, never went anywhere. ” (“You’re making up for it now! inch Efron chips in). “Maybe that’s section of it, I love road movies, but consciously I don’t really think about them. ”

The film is adapted from the book Donohue wrote about his adventure, published in 2020, but the tale first came across Farrelly’s desk thanks to a 12-minute YouTube doc about the journey, released five yrs earlier.

“Most of all, [Donohue] is certainly motivated by this particular pure sense associated with love for his friends, ” Efron says.

“But he doesn’t have all of the answers. He’s brave enough to just kind of throw himself out there and follow through with a pretty crazy concept that he had while he was drunk. inch

Farrelly concludes: “I think there’s a lesson on this movie – Vietnam was a bad battle, and we didn’t this at first. When I say all of us, Americans thought it was World War 2, but it wasn’t, it was a completely different issue.

“It got years for the reality to come out, and finally from the 1970s Americans started seeing the reality of what that war was, and it was obviously a disaster, it was poor, it didn’t help anybody. Many Americans died and many more Vietnamese people died, plus it was unnecessary. inch

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is usually released on Apple company TV+ on Friday.