An average movie

I already saw this movie but, since it was ages ago and since it was available on Disney+, I thought I might as well check it out again. Basically, this movie would be Robin Williams's first real commercial and critical hit (he would even get his first nomination for an Academy Award) and it would in fact provide the blue-print for most of his future work. To be honest, like most of the other popular movies starring this actor, I always had some mixed feelings about this flick. I mean, watching this movie after all these years, it’s clear that Williams was basically born to play this guy and I wonder if this specific character was not close to who Williams was in real life. Anyway, each time he was doing his radio broadcast, the damned thing was just so hilarious. However, how do you make a movie about a radio DJ during the Vietnam war? It did sound extremely challenging and, to be honest, it seems that Levinson never really managed to figure this out. First of all, they didn’t really know what should be the tone. Indeed, half of it was a comedy making it look almost like a Disney feature. However, since they were dealing with the Vietnam war, there were also some dramatic moments but these constant switch in tones were rather jarring. They also struggled to include this real life person in some actual storyline so they tried several things. The main thread was dealing with some of his army colleagues who didn’t care for him and tried to get rid of him but, to be honest, it was just tedious because, at the end of the day, it was just a radio show. In the same fashion, you had some bits during which Cronauer was pissed off because he couldn’t tell the actual truth on the air but it was also ridiculous because he was just a DJ hired to lift up the morals of the troops, he was not there to enlighten them up. All these conflicts were just so blown up out of proportions, I have to admit that it still did work but only barely though. Also troublesome was how the Vietnamese locals were depicted here. At first, they displayed Cronauer as seriously horny which could have been interesting but it lasted maybe for 5 mins. He then acted as a gentleman with this cute Vietnamese girl through most of the duration but this romance was so half-baked and it should probably have been removed. Finally, the last attempt to build up some narrative around this character was to make his best Vietnamese friend actually a Vietcong fighter which was not a bad idea but this turn-of-event came towards the end so there was no time to do something really interesting with that either. Anyway, to conclude, even though I’m still not a huge fan, I have to admit that it is still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Robin Williams’s work.