Average film that will only get better if you really like Williams' hyper comedy and overacting

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2004)

In the Vietnam demilitarised zone, the US troops are 'entertained' by the forces radio under the command of Sgt Maj Dickerson and 2nd Lt Hauk. Into the rather stale and censored station comes broadcaster Adrian Cronauer, who's impressions and crazy sense of humour immediately gets the support of the troops and becomes an instant hit. However his inability to follow orders causes major problems with his superiors; but things get worse as the Vietnam war starts to kick off with bombings and guerrilla warfare. Cronauer is forced to enter the reality of life in Vietnam and come out from behind his microphone.
It has been many years since I saw this film and I remember laughing at it so much that I bought the soundtrack because it included snippets of Cronauer's radio broadcast. However then I was a young teenager and was maybe more of a Williams fan than I am now  and here we have the crux of the film, if you love Robin Williams' style of stand up then you will enjoy this film but if you aren't won over by that then there is little else to win you over. The plot mostly trades on Cronauer upsetting his superiors before eventually getting into a final 30 minutes of 'oh, look, isn't war awful' that is delivered with such an obvious change of pace that. The film should have had this aspect running through it with a blacker vein of humour (a la M*A*S*H for example) and it would have been much better; as it is, it is more like an hour of a stand up show which then tries to be an affecting war story. It is OK but it didn't really work for me because I didn't find the jokes that funny and didn't appreciate the sudden reality check at the end.
Williams tries really hard and I was surprised that I didn't laugh as much as I did  maybe he never had time to get momentum up as his routines were edited all to hell and were delivered too fast. I have seen him in early stand up and found him hilarious so maybe it was a mix of delivery and material letting him down. The support cast is mostly pretty good and features some well known actors even if they don't all have that much to do.
Whitaker has a good feel for the material and is nice enough; Kirby allows himself to be a fool; Wuhl is OK as a sort of comedy aside; Edson is OK and both Walsh and Willingham add clout in more serious roles. Tran and Sukapatana have much lesser roles and exist to carry the weight of the 'war is awful' message, they drift aimlessly enough for most of the film before getting to shout lots towards the end.
Overall this is an OK film that rather averagely delivers comedy and a 'war is hell' message, but it was a problem for me that it seemed to deliver these is two different strands rather than being successfully mixed together. If you are a big Robin Williams fan then you should like this as his manic stand up personae gets a good run here but I imagine many viewers will feel that the 'message' is rather thrust onto them. Worth a look but there are much better wartime comedies that are darker, funnier and much more intelligent than this one.