Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) * * *

Directed by:  Barry Levinson

Starring:  Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Bruno Kirby, JT Walsh, Noble Willingham, Chinatra Sukapatana, Thanh Tran, Robert Wuhl

Good Morning, Vietnam stars Robin Williams in a role he was born to play, which fits Williams' motormouth, rapid-fire style of verbal humor.    Here he is Air Force DJ Adrian Cronauer, based on a real person, who shakes loose from the strict conventions of Armed Forces Radio to deliver impersonations and comedy to the troops during the Vietnam War.   The radio station is in the demilitarized zone, but it isn't far from the eye of the hurricane.  Cronauer sees what is happening and uses humor as a way to protest that Americans are fighting a senseless war.

Cronauer's style perturbs his superiors, who would love nothing more than for him to stick to the format of playing the approved playlist of soft, "non-threatening" music like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.  Heaven forbid the troops want some relief from the peril they face every minute of the day.  Cronauer is forever being called on the carpet for his antics, which range from improvised radio bits to doctoring a taped interview of Richard Nixon which paints the then-former Vice President in an unflattering light.   One can picture Howard Stern putting his bosses through the same wringer decades later as he attempted to free radio from the constraints of convention.  One particularly funny scene involves one of the superiors (Kirby) attempting to fill the shoes of the suspended Cronauer over the protests of the radio staff.  "You're not funny, sir," the staff tells him to a man.  After a disastrously unfunny skit, the delusional Kirby says, "I think apologies are in order." 

Cronauer at first doesn't seem to let much get to him.  He is happy being a clown on the radio, but as he witnesses the violence surrounding him and his superiors' attempts to edit the news feeds to cover it up, Cronauer finds he can not abide this.  He befriends a Vietnamese woman (Sukapatana) and her younger brother (Tran), who at first seem innocuous, but may in fact be aViet Cong agent.  Cronauer so infuriates his big boss Sgt. Dickerson (Walsh) that Dickerson sends him on a news assignment through an area swarming with the Viet Cong.   Cronauer succinctly describes Dickerson as, "in need of a blow job than any white man I've ever met,"  

Williams was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role here.  I am of two minds about it.  The radio shtick is so close to Williams' stand-up style that I found myself numb to it after a while.  I am not a fan of Williams' stand-up, but I appreciate its uniqueness if that makes any sense at all.  In Good Morning, Vietnam, I appreciated the reasons behind Cronauer's humor more than I appreciated the humor itself.     I'm sure Williams' antics were largely improvised, which fits within the character's love of wacky improvisation.   But, Williams handles himself well in the transition scenes from clown to caring protester.  

Directed by Barry Levinson, who made the brilliant Tin Men earlier in 1987, Good Morning, Vietnam realizes that the bullets fired from both sides will negate each other.   There must be other methods used to point out the futility of war and how adherence to convention only compounds the problem.     Humor is among them.   Adrian Cronauer realized that and used it as the best weapon he had at his disposal to fight back.