Confused comedy 'The Greatest Beer Run Ever' is a warm can of suds

Say you're fighting in Vietnam, and say your buddy from back home, who is not a soldier and is not in the war, walks up to you on the battlefield and hands you a beer.

On one hand, it's beer, and hey, it's good to see a familiar face. On the other hand, wait, what are you doing here? And that's it, a beer? And it's warm, even?

That's the extremely shaky premise of "The Greatest Beer Run Ever," a comedy which doesn't know what to do with itself, or what to make of its protagonist. Is this guy a supreme dope or an American hero? Or is he both?

Zac Efron plays the dope/ hero, and in his sincere but blank gazes just beyond the camera, he never lands on any answers either. He's John "Chickie" Donohue, a good old boy from Manhattan's Inwood neighborhood, who's tiring of watching his friends go off to war and not come home. He wants to do his part, and when someone at the neighborhood tavern off-handedly jokes about going over there and bringing the boys some beers, Chickie takes it entirely too seriously and makes it his mission to round up some PBRs for the fellas and head on over to 'Nam. As a Marine Corps vet, he can catch a ride on the next ship out.

OK, now we can all relate to the guy who stubbornly decides to do something stupid because he's convinced it will one day make a great story. Maybe that means getting in a car and driving overnight to New York City to buy a red New York Yankees cap because you want to be Fred Durst for Halloween, and maybe that means running some beers out to your pals in Vietnam. Who's to say? The point is any version of that story should not skip over the stupid part, the self-doubt, the "what am I doing?" part that is essential to understanding the psyche of the person at the center of the journey. "The Greatest Beer Run," suffice to say, leaves all that stuff out.

It fills in the gaps with hackneyed lessons in "war is bad"-ism, along with Chickie's slow awakening that — newsflash! — maybe Vietnam wasn't being fought for the right reasons and that our leaders were lying to us.

Director Peter Farrelly, working in the same earnest mode as his more successful 2018 Best Picture winner "Green Book" (as opposed to madcap comic mode of "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber," which he made with his brother, Bobby), treats all of this information as if it's being learned for the first time, presenting straw man characters/ caricatures who talk politics at bars — the neighborhood boys back home in New York and war correspondents at a posh hotel in Saigon — who sound as knowledgeable about geopolitics and the situation at hand as high schoolers preparing for debate class.

And then there's Chickie, learning first-hand of the horrors of war, while also playing delivery boy to his pals with his seemingly bottomless duffel bag full of beers. His travels around Vietnam, conning helicopter flights from military bases by hinting he's CIA but denying he's CIA — which is exactly what a CIA guy would do! — are their own separate-separate Chevy Chase comedy within the story, but "Beer Run" is never quite sure what story it's telling. (Chickie's brief friendship with a Vietnamese traffic cop is so hackneyed it's best left undiscussed.)

Russell Crowe plays an embedded war reporter who's seen it all and is slightly amused by Chickie, even though he, too, isn't quite sure if he's the village idiot or the last true patriot. Turns out he's in pretty good company. "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" is based on a true story, and that true story might have had some fizz if told in documentary form. This version, however, goes flat before the tab is even pulled.

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama

'The Greatest Beer Run Ever'

GRADE: D

Rated R: for language and some war violence

Running time: 127 minutes

On Apple TV+