Much more hyped than it really deserves.

Rating: 6/10 (4 September 2009)

Robin Williams plays Adrian Cronauer, a real-life DJ stationed in Vietnam. He confronts authority and does what he can to defend the Vietnamese people, while befriending one man and trying to date his sister with moderate success. And then things go downhill.
I can sum this movie up in one sentence: Robin Williams is not funny. The film is full of him ad-libbing voices where he's a homosexual, or a redneck or referencing people that were probably forgotten in 1987, and definitely today. He's decent as an actor when not trying to be funny, but every attempt at humor falls flat. To make matters worse, people in the background are literally falling out of their chairs with laughter... I don't think so.
Forest Whitaker is in this, and plays more or less no role other than to follow Cronauer around and be a somewhat dim-witted sidekick who can't ride a bike or start a jeep properly. That's unfortunate that Whitaker was sidelined for Williams.
You've most likely seen this film, as it has aired on television a million times in the past twenty years. I avoided it, and only came to view it by random happenstance. This was, as it turns out, a mistake, and I was right to avoid it. (Also, if you have any interest in real Vietnam War history, the actual Cronauer makes it clear that Williams did not portray him even remotely accurately.)