Good Morning, Vietnam

Good Morning, Vietnam works as straight comedy and as a Vietnam-era MASH, and even the movie’s love story has its own bittersweet integrity. Read full review

One of Levinson's best films, and one of Hollywood's best films on the whole Vietnam subject. Read full review

Good Morning, Vietnam, directed by Barry Levinson (Diner, Tin Men) succeeds in doing something that's very rare in movies, being about a character who really is as funny as he's supposed to be to most of the people sharing the fiction with him. It's also a breakthrough for Mr. Williams, who, for the first time in movies, gets a chance to exercise his restless, full-frontal comic intelligence. Read full review

From the start, the film bowls you over with excitement and for those who can latch on, it’s a nonstop ride. Read full review

Vietnam will do well on the strength of Williams' performance: He's Groucho in 'Nam, with his rapid-fire quips and cast of imaginary guests. But when it's time to mourn Cronauer's departure, after a final softball game with the locals and a farewell to buddies-in-arms, there isn't a wet eye in the house. [15 Jan 1988, p.N31]

Good Morning, Vietnam stumbles whenever Williams isn't behind the mike, placing him in melodramatic, hackneyed situations that become increasingly predictable and preposterous, and director Barry Levinson's seemingly endless reaction shots of listeners grooving to the DJ's antics become irritating. Levinson manages, however, to be one of the few filmmakers to show the Vietnamese as complex, cultured people, rather than as helpless victims or the faceless enemy. Read full review

All the film's energy, and most of its appeal, lie in the scenes in which Williams is talking to his audience, the most singular captive audience in Top 40 history. These moments do ring true, and they have a fine humanity to them. [15 Jan 1988, p.C1]

The first comedy about that war, Good Morning, Vietnam manages to be uproariously funny without ignoring or trivializing the tragedy. It's awkwardly contrived here and there, especially during its recon patrols into Vietnamese life, but for the most part Mitch Markowitz's skeletal script is smart enough to dig in, hunker down and stay out of Robin Williams' line of fire. [22 Dec 1987]

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. Read full review

The film itself--a dramatic comedy based on the 1965 Saigon gig of irreverent Armed Forces disc jockey Adrian Cronauer--is good-hearted but shallow. It's a piece of programmed irreverence, photogenic torpor, prefab compassion. But Williams, as Cronauer, is so blazingly brilliant that he detonates the center, exploding it in berserk blasts of electronic-age surreality. Read full review

Good Morning, Vietnam moves fitfully, as it should. Like Tin Men and Diner, there's an underbelly of sadness here. Audiences expecting an all-out Robin Williams comedy may feel shortchanged. The banter in Good Morning, Vietnam is lively, but its mood has the melancholy bitterness of truth. [15 Jan 1988, p.6]

Williams is at his best in Good Morning, Vietnam when he’s pitched between manic and earnest: when he’s reacting to his castmates, who actually are funny. Too much of Good Morning, Vietnam, though, is self-congratulatory without giving any real reason for the applause. Read full review

What you end up with in Good Morning, Vietnam is a peculiar hybrid -- a Robin Williams concert movie welded clumsily onto the plot from an old Danny Kaye picture. And neither half works. Read full review

There's still enough hardcore Williams-when he's sitting by himself in his studio-to make Good Morning, Vietnam worthwhile, but the alarm bells are sounding. Heres another comic who wants to play Hamlet. Read full review

The way the story line has been directed it's a clumsier versions of the plots of 50s musicals.