The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Apple TV+ | Release Date: September 23, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
16
Negative:
10
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 15, 2022
Like “Green Book,” The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a broad historical outing based on real people and real events, condensed down into an essence that can only be billed as “crowd-pleasing.” 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. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonSep 29, 2022
The Greatest Beer Run Ever is far too interested in having a good time to get too heavy about a bygone American argument, but there are truths to be found in the film, by peering through its various fogs of war. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshSep 29, 2022
Though the messaging is a bit flat-footed, it’s nonetheless effective, and clearly deeply felt, and it brings a sense of significance to this otherwise wacky real-life story, one that really does have to be seen to be believed. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 28, 2022
The intentions and performances are irrefutably sincere and noble. The execution almost always feels a little bit forced and a little bit false. Read full review
60
TimeStephanie ZacharekOct 3, 2022
Just because a movie is based on a true story doesn’t mean you have to fully buy it: 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. Read full review
60
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 30, 2022
Farrelly shows us the formative experience, but only a little of its consequence. Perhaps too much consideration of that would make the whole thing seem something less than great. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentSep 27, 2022
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. Read full review
58
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpSep 29, 2022
Farrelly’s too busy making a Big Important Movie instead of making a movie that matters. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineJosh WiseSep 29, 2022
When it decides to sober up, the film’s comedy lurches into awkward attempts at melancholy. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 27, 2022
This “beer run” from Inwood, Manhattan, to Saigon and “up country” environs starts jaunty, gets somber and sentimental and then goes oh-so-very-wrong. You’ll feel it the instant it happens, just as I did. Read full review
50
The New York TimesAmy NicholsonSep 22, 2022
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. They’ve endured agonies he’ll never understand — and a barfly like him can’t deliver a cheers that will set things right. Read full review
50
IGNRafael MotamayorSep 15, 2022
Peter Farrelly's follow-up to Green Book is a war drama with some solid laughs and a great Zac Efron performance, but a manipulative script with ugly optics and boring visuals that never achieve the prestige it clearly wants. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlSep 28, 2022
The arguments presented by the characters on each side are broad and reductive. There’s no nuance and no original thoughts. The information is obvious and presented at its least confrontational. It’s a scene meant to depict the moral dilemma at the center of its story, and it ends up being ridiculous. Read full review
42
The Film StageSoham GadreSep 28, 2022
Farrelly does everything to make this beer run as unfunny, plodding, and needlessly repetitive as possible. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriOct 2, 2022
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. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeOct 2, 2022
[A] crass and manipulative warsploitation picture. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 29, 2022
The idea is that Chickie’s experiences will challenge his simplistic view of the conflict, but Farrelly frames his jaunt as a glorified gap year, with various atrocities repackaged as opportunities for personal growth. Napalm Read full review
40
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonSep 29, 2022
The film is messy and gets tangled up in its protagonist’s folly, but in the process, Zac Efron delivers a heartfelt and killer performance. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleSarah JaneSep 29, 2022
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? Read full review
40
The GuardianCharles BramescoSep 14, 2022
[Farrelly's] latest commits itself to regurgitating every Vietnam cliche with the laziest possible visual diction, led by an emotionally overextended Zac Efron. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeMark FeeneySep 28, 2022
Perhaps the biggest problem with Beer Run is tonal haphazardness. Sometimes it’s meant to be funny — other times serious — other times even solemn. (Alternate title: “Chickie Learns About the Horrors of War.”) The few jokes that are clearly intentional tend to fall flat. Read full review
33
ConsequenceWilliam BibbianiSep 30, 2022
Whatever this film’s intentions may have been, and perhaps they were wholly noble, one thing is abundantly clear: Smokey and the Bandit is still, and without much competition, cinema’s greatest beer run. And that movie managed to deliver a whole truckload of beer without doing any disservice to the Vietnam War. Read full review
33
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 14, 2022
Peter Farrelly’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” isn’t so much a bad movie — though it’s certainly that — as an inexplicable one, a comedy/drama set in the Vietnam War that somehow believes it’s saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times already about that conflict, and far more skillfully. Read full review
30
Little White LiesMark AschSep 28, 2022
The film doesn’t have the detail or imagination to fill in the gaps of a well-worn story with anything convincing. Read full review
30
TheWrapSteve PondSep 14, 2022
The early scenes are at times surprisingly awkward – and while things get better when Chickie gets to Vietnam and Russell Crowe shows up to (briefly) ground the movie with his quiet gravity, “Beer Run” still lurches from silliness to preachiness in a way that’s rarely satisfying. Read full review
30
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 14, 2022
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” lumbers and meanders, and not just because the structure isn’t there. What we’re seeing, on a human level, is only half-interesting and rather slipshod. Like “Green Book,” “Greatest Beer Run” is based on a true story, but what Peter Farrelly responded to in that story translates, this time, into a token “relevant” boomer nostalgia that hasn’t been fully thought through. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenSep 14, 2022
Farrelly’s loftier impulses work against the material. The result is a meandering, disjointed production that struggles throughout to find a satisfying tone. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 30, 2022
It’s 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. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 28, 2022
Efron makes what he can of an impossible role. He’s watchable, that helps. Read full review
20
Screen DailyTim GriersonSep 14, 2022
Feels manipulative and glib ... Farrelly’s tendency toward simplistic bromides in Green Book is even more egregious here. Read full review
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