Robin Williams plays Adrian Cronauer, an Armed Forces Radio Service DJ who arrives in Saigon in 1965 and becomes a massive hit with the troops, even as his superiors at the station keep trying to shut him down. It is a comedy about a man who is the wrong person in the wrong place at the right time, and it is one of the funniest films of the 1980s.
Trailer, via 05HK09.
Cronauer’s Show
Cronauer’s show starts with his signature call: “Good morning, Vietnam!” He reads censored news and tells irreverent jokes, mixes in rock music, and teaches an English class full of students American slang and swear words. He befriends Tuan, a Vietnamese boy whose sister Trinh he tries to court. When Cronauer reports an explosion that kills two soldiers, he locks himself in the studio and broadcasts the news anyway, and that is where the film’s spine sits.
The humor is built on Williams’s physical comedy and his ability to make a military radio station feel like a chaotic, joyful mess. The film never lets the war become a weight on the story, and it never lets the comedy become hollow. That balance is hard to pull off, and Good Morning, Vietnam does it with confidence.
The Characters
Forest Whitaker plays Private Edward Garlick, who takes Cronauer to the station. Chintara Sukapatana plays Trinh, and Tom T. Tran plays her brother Tuan. Bruno Kirby plays Lieutenant Steven Hauk, a man who follows Army guidelines with humor and music programming, while J.T. Walsh plays Sergeant Major Phillip Dickerson, who is abusive to the enlisted men. Robert Wuhl plays Marty Lee Dreiwitz, and Noble Willingham plays Brigadier General Taylor, who grows to like Cronauer’s comedy even as Dickerson tries to stop him.
The film is a star vehicle for Williams, but the supporting cast gives him a world worth playing in. The racism of the two soldiers who start a fight at Jimmy Wah’s bar is handled with restraint, and the film’s politics never feel like a lecture.
The Facts
- Director: Barry Levinson
- Writer: Mitch Markowitz
- Runtime: 121 minutes
- Genres: Comedy, Drama, War
- Tagline: “The wrong man. In the wrong place. At the right time.”
A Funny War
Good Morning, Vietnam is a comedy about a war, and that is a hard balance to strike. It works because Williams commits fully to the character, and because the film trusts its audience to understand that a man who tells jokes on the radio is not the same as a man who is indifferent to the war.
“The wrong man. In the wrong place. At the right time.”
That line gives the film its shape. Cronauer is a small man in a huge situation, and the film lets him be funny without diminishing what is happening around him. It is a film about connection, about being a voice that people want to hear, and about the power of a joke told well. The film ends with Cronauer suspended and Hauk taking over the show, but the joke is on the Army. Cronauer is the man who got it right, even when he was the wrong man for the job.
Good Morning, Vietnam is a comedy about a war, and it is a comedy that earns its laughter.
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