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Good Morning, Vietnam

Good Morning, Vietnam

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Put that man on the radio
Review: In my opinion this is R. Williams at his best it has variety and laughter. It has him teaching the vietnamese english as a second language- williams style. It has him doing improvisational monologues so well on the radio that he makes it difficult to tell he's following a script or not. It's laugh-outloud funny. It's a thinking person's comedy and a laughing man's drama.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Balanced mix of comedy and seriousness.
Review: Like his roles in "Dead Poet's Society" and "Patch Adams," Robin Williams plays the role of a man trying persistenly to enlighten and help others in spite of a stubborn and wrong status quo and authority figures. He is undoubtedly funnier here than in either of those two movies.

Adrian Croener's lively, upbeat, and hilarious radio show contrasts with the monotone, boring, and mundane show of the other DJ. Right from the start, his superiors at the radio station treat him like dirt for no good reason at all. One of them replaces him on the radio for a short time and while he thought he was funny, the only funny thing about his show was that he thought he was funny. Among the humor on his show are things like voice impersonations, saying Nixon sounds like Mr. Ed the horse, creating guest voices in the studio, and my favorite- playing a tape he was forced to play of a conversation with Nixon. He played it allright, but he interrupted segments of it with questions directed at Nixon, followed by his taped response to another question. For example, one of the parts went somethign like this: Nixon was saying, "I'm very unsatisfied with it, there's a lack of feeling there," and before it he interrupted the tape and asked, "How is your sex life?"

In the studio, Adrian sees the news coming in and that it must be "approved" before it is read on the air to the soldiers in Vietnam. The things that are struck out are bits of news that point to a long, hard, and losing war ahead. He wants the soldiers to be aware of these things, reasoning that freedom of speech is what America is all about. He finally has "had it" with the resistance when a restaurant is blown up which he was in just a minute before. So he gives up on the radio, but the masses make plain his extraordinary popularity and he gets back on.

In the ending, Adrian is forced to relocate because he was friends with a boy who turned out to be the enemy. This highlights a point he made earlier-- how do you know where or who the enemy is? Angry, he chased down the boy and asked him what the hell. The boy explained that it is not the communists but the Americans who are the enemy of Vietnam. He tearfully yells about his family members who have been killed by American troops. This incident highlights the point of the movie that American involvement in Vietnam was wrong.

The conclusion of the movie is that although Adrian was stuck in a troubled, bad situation, he made the most of it, managing to do good and remain uncorrupted.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: DVD, not the movie.
Review: My 1* rating is for the DVD, not the movie which is 5*.

Most poeople will have seen this film on video and tv and enjoyed it, some of you old folks may have even seen it at the cinema. I think that this is a great film and it belongs in my favourite collection.

A lot of reviews here talk about the film so I wont. I just bought the DVD and watched it, although I have the video as well.

The picture quality was bad, fuzzy and grainy in many places, and I mean the picture, not the mpeg compression.

It was possible in quite a few places to see the mpeg rings. The sound was average, not brilliant but not poor.

There are no real extra features to talk about.

So given that this movie has a great following in many countries I would have expected the DVD conversion crew to have done a much better job.

With no extras and not been a really long film there is no reason to allow compression rings to be visible, where they are visible the conversion people just have to lower the compression rate for that part, and us the viewers would never know.

It appears that all they did was to copy the old movie onto a DVD without any effort, knowing that many people will buy the DVD. I think that the video copy I have matches the DVD for picture quality, not for sound of course.

If you have Good Morning Vietnam on video treasure it and save yourself £15 ($20). Maybe in the future a 'special' anniversary edition will be released that the producers will have invested both time and money in to give us a DVD worth buying, of course they could just release it again as is for all us muggs to be ripped off again.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A very rare example where a war theme is so
Review: One thing about this movie is that it is probably one of the best movies of the 80-s.

Another true fact is that Barry Levinson, Robin Williams and late J.T. Walsh will be remembered in 40 years time primarily because they made GMV!.

It IS very funny (do not be tempted to watch in any other language but original!) yet is a very serious film - definetely not Arnold and Dolf type. It brings to attention just another side if Nam war but not only. A delicate but nonetheless impressive show of characters under the strain of another "...for the sake of the nation..." crusade.

No Vietnam theme is complete without GMV and it certainly deserves buying a DVD player just to have this single movie in collection - bacause you'll play it over and over again.

It is not enough to put together light, film, camera and a few actors to make a movie. It takes talent, luck and some majic to make real one. These guys had all three of it.

A dope movie! Thank you, Touchstone...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good-Bye Vietnam!
Review: Overrated! The first two-thirds of GOOD MORNING VIETNAM is pretty good. This is when the film is a comedy and Robin Williams as AFR's Saigon radio disc jockey Adrian Cronauer is doing his shtick and everyone is happy and laughing. However, it goes into dark territory as the Williams' character experiences the horrors of war and his time on-air becomes a little more serious than comedic. Also, Cronauer/Williams becomes involved with some of the local Vietnamese to give him a little dramatic licence. This slows down the story and almost wipes clean the comedy aspect of the film. All of a sudden, his superior who has it in for Cronauer and his radio show antics in the first place, Lt. Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby) takes over the radio duties. Hauk's humor has more bombs than all that was dropped during the war. If the characters in the film are put off by Hauk/Kirby taking over the mic, it is more excrutiating for the film audience. Overall, a film which misses the target at the last third of the film because what starts out as a comedic vehicle for Williams becomes an apology-card for the Vietnam War.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Maybe RW's best! Na Nu Na Nu.
Review: Robin williams brings high energy to this film and welcome entertainment to boys and men who are risking their lives in a foreign land. This movie came out at a time when most vietnam movies were gut wretching excursions into hell. You can't get the same feel now, since better vietnam war movies have been made, the feelings towards that war have evolved. But when this movie first appeared, as Cronauer started going off where he shouldn't go, there was always present a certain feeling of dread for his safety. That tension balanced with the tremendous comedy created a unique experience. The only comparison I can make is when in a MASH tv episode, Hawkeye goes off and gets stranded. You know that the writers will never kill off Hawkeye and Alan Alda, their star. You can't have the same tension between comedy and dread as was created in GMV. The writers could kill off Cronauer. We knew it.

That robin williams could pull this off and make this double edged sword work has always amazed this fellow suburban chicagoan.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Maybe RW's best! Na Nu Na Nu.
Review: Robin williams brings high energy to this film and welcome entertainment to boys and men who are risking their lives in a foreign land. This movie came out at a time when most vietnam movies were gut wretching excursions into hell. You can't get the same feel now, since better vietnam war movies have been made, the feelings towards that war have evolved. But when this movie first appeared, as Cronauer started going off where he shouldn't go, there was always present a certain feeling of dread for his safety. That tension balanced with the tremendous comedy created a unique experience. The only comparison I can make is when in a MASH tv episode, Hawkeye goes off and gets stranded. You know that the writers will never kill off Hawkeye and Alan Alda, their star. You can't have the same tension between comedy and dread as was created in GMV. The writers could kill off Cronauer. We knew it.

That robin williams could pull this off and make this double edged sword work has always amazed this fellow suburban chicagoan.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Morning, Vietnam!
Review: Robin Williams gives his best performance as Adrian Kronauer, the manic Vietnam DJ, managing to blend riotous humor, tenderness, and believability into the real-life character he portrays. I don't know if Kronauer is really like this--but, based on Williams' other performances in real-life roles (Patch Adams comes to mind) I think he is pretty close. If I had been serving in Vietnam, risking my life on a daily basis, I would rather listen to the Stones or CCR and have someone like Kronauer/Williams to listen to than all the other pap the government served up at that time (Lawrence Welk, the McGuire Sisters, etal.)!

Thanks for allowing me the space and time to air my personal views.

Maura Meyer

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A completely Different Take On The War In Vietnam
Review: Robin Williams is a comic genius. When he made this film, he was just beginning to show that he can do dramatic acting as well. He mixed both varieties well in this film.

As the film progresses, you begin to identify with the characters. And, amazingly, the Vietnamese are not the antagonists.... The bad guys are the officer and sargeant major that are his immediate superiors.

There are plenty of really funny scenes. There are also plenty of dramatic and action scenes. After watching this film, I wanted to find out more about Pat Sajack.

Definitly a good film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: one star is too many
Review: Robin Williams is a sweat act. This movie was a vehicle for Williams' stand up routine, and nothing more. No acting, just Robin Williams schtick.


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