Recensioni de* critic*

Farrelly’s disappointing follow-up to Green Book suggests that he has found his formula – blue-collar bigot goes on a journey, has his eyes opened and his preconceptions challenged – and he’s sticking to it... [A] crass and manipulative warsploitation picture.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever isn’t terrible, and it’s hardly great. But the worst thing you can say about it is that it’s almost as dreamily clueless as its hapless hero is... Farrelly’s great sin here is that he just wants to tell a nice story about a guy who did a crazy thing and learned some valuable lessons in the process. It doesn’t fully work, but it’s not a crime against humanity. And Efron carries the whole thing ably on his shoulders.

[Beer Run is] not just a bad movie—those are common enough to be dismissible—but a movie that I found grossly condescending and manipulative, a dramedy that’s so deeply unconcerned with its actual true story other than how it can be crafted to emotionally impact an audience.

Most of all, I’m really struggling with why this movie was even made. Yes, it’s based on a true story, but is it one that needed telling on screen? The movie sells us on the idea there are two sides to the story when it comes to Vietnam and, I’m sorry, what?

It’s hard to tell if The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a comedy that wants to be a drama or a drama that wants to be a comedy. Of course, a film can be both. This one, alas, is neither... The filmmakers seem so impressed with the fact that all this really happened that they haven’t done the work necessary onscreen to convince us that something like this could really happen.

[Beer Can] carries itself as the kind of old-fashioned, fun-with-heart entertainment Hollywood generally no longer makes. But in its craven triangulation of a political angle that will offend absolutely no-one, it feels wimpishly contemporary: imagine Platoon rewritten by Nick Clegg.

Film schools should show their students Beer Run’s Saigon street scenes... to demonstrate how ADs choreograph background action to give shots a naturalistic dynamism. Or how, sometimes, they don’t do that at all. What could have possibly given Farrelly the confidence to think he could direct a battle scene when he can’t even direct traffic?

Any willingness to give The Greatest Beer Run Ever a pass might largely be credited to Efron, who has evolved from a teen heartthrob into an intriguing, decidedly grownup actor.

Farrelly does everything to make this beer run as unfunny, plodding, and needlessly repetitive as possible. The director’s politics are so excruciating because there’s nothing fun to distract from them... Yet his politics have not moved beyond the year 2003, the last time he made a movie that lived up to his comedic sensibilities.

Peter Farrelly’s latest semi-serious effort is light, goofy and sometimes perilously frivolous. But like sharing a few beers with your buds, you soon warm to it.

The film starts like a Super Bowl commercial and ends like a hangover... Depth comes from Efron’s visible difficulty maintaining a smile as he comes to sense that he’s crossed the ocean only to discover a permanent gulf between him and his childhood friends.

Like “Green Book,” “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is a broad historical outing based on real people and real events... The trick this time: Farrelly seems far more aware of how he’s playing fast and loose with history to offer a zippy feature to a fractured world. Dare we say it: It works far better.