Starring: Zac Efron, Russell Crowe, Bill Murray, Jake Picking, Will Ropp, Archie Renaux, Kyle Allen
OUR RATING: ★★½
Story:
Apple TV+ comedy drama directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly. Based on a true story, set in 1967, The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) follows John “Chickie” Donohue (Zac Efron), who wants to support his friends fighting in Vietnam, so he does something wild, personally bring them American beer. What starts as a well-meaning journey quickly changes Chickie’s life and perspective as he is confronted with the horrors of war.
Our Favorite Quotes:
'Smuggling beer into a war zone. That is not the smartest thing I've ever heard of. It's certainly not the worst either.' - Coates (The Greatest Beer Run Ever) Share on X
Best Quotes
Mr. Donohue: Look at you, sleeping your life away.
Chickie Donohue: I’ll stay awake when I’m dead.
Mrs. Donohue: What are you doing tonight, Chickie?
Mr. Donohue: What do you think he’s doing? It’s the same every night with him. Right, he’s off on a toot. He sleeps all day. He’s “Good Time Chickie”. Must be fun.
Chickie Donohue: This is my time to kick back and relax a little, like a professor on summer break.
Mr. Donohue: Oh. Oh, yeah. You’re a professor. And your grandmother’s Miss America.
Mr. Donohue: When I was your age, I had two jobs. I had three kids. I had a wife.
Chickie Donohue: So it’s my fault you knocked up Ma in high school?
Mrs. Donohue: Chickie! We got pregnant after we were married!
Chickie Donohue: Oh, come on, Ma. You got married in January. Gerard was born in June. It don’t add up.
Mrs. Donohue: It was a leap year.
Chickie Donohue: A what? What does that mean?
Mrs. Donohue: Gerard came early. That’s how it adds up.
The Colonel: They should not be showing this on TV. This would not fly back in my day.
Chickie Donohue: There was no TV back in your day.
The Colonel: Yeah. And we were better for it. War is not a TV show. It’s too real-life.
Noodle: And the American people can’t handle real life?
The Colonel: No, they can’t. And they shouldn’t have to. Bringing dead soldiers, guys with no arms and legs, into our living rooms is not helping no one. If they had showed the Battle of the Bulge on TV, we’d have quit after three days. We didn’t. We took our licks, but we pushed them back, and we won.
Noodle: It was a different time. It was a different war, Colonel.
Chickie Donohue: Jesus, Danny. Don’t you ever have an opinion that you stick to? You just blow with the wind, don’t you?
Red: No. I just try to be open-minded to everybody’s point of view. Like the way dogs are.
Brendan: “Like the way dogs are”? What’s he saying?
Chickie Donohue: Oh, I’m just saying dogs don’t judge.
Protestor #1: [as Chickie blows out the candles] Those candles represent soldiers who were killed in Vietnam!
Chickie Donohue: Oh. Sorry. I thought they were peace candles.
Protestor #2: What, you got a problem with peace?
Chickie Donohue: I got a problem with you, mouth! These demonstrations are hurting our troops!
Red: Yeah, why don’t you just keep marching right up to Canada and lock the key behind you?
Chickie Donohue: What the hell are you doing? Go home now! You’re embarrassing yourself, and you’re embarrassing your family.
Christine: Trying to save more Inwood kids from dying is embarrassing myself?
Chickie Donohue: That’s right. Because this, this ain’t helping nobody.
Christine: At least I’m trying to get them home alive. Everyone’s doing something, and you’re doing nothing.
Chickie Donohue: I served four years in uniform, starting when I was eighteen years-old.
Christine: You were playing poker in a military base in Massachusetts. You weren’t dodging bullets. You were dodging bar tabs. So quit acting like you’ve been there!
Christine: I don’t want to see no more kids die for nothing!
Chickie Donohue: For nothing? They died to save us from communism!
Red: I just wish our guys could see that the vast minority of the country’s behind them.
Noodle: You mean vast majority?
Red: Well, no. I wouldn’t go that far. I think most people are behind them. Yeah, sure. But not everyone.
The Colonel: You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to go over to Vietnam, and track down Reynolds, Collins, Pappas, Duggan, Minogue. You know, all the boys in the neighborhood. And just give them a beer, you know? To say thank you.
Chickie Donohue: I could do that.
Red: Do what?
Chickie Donohue: Bring them beer. I could sign up for a ship headed to ‘Nam. Drop off a few brews.
'Every once in a while you run into a guy who's too dumb to get killed.' - Sgt. Mojor Perez (The Greatest Beer Run Ever) Share on X
Red: Are you serious, Chick? You can just hop on a merchant marine ship, and drive over there?
Noodle: Of course he’s not serious. He’s hammered. Look at him.
The Colonel: The man is stone sober. That’s his fifth beer, maybe, tops.
Brendan: Don’t bulls**t us, Chick. Could you really pull this off?
Chickie Donohue: Could, would, and will. That’s a promise. I’m going to show them that this neighborhood and this country is still behind them.
Chickie Donohue: It’ll prop our boys up. Maybe a good old American beer will remind them what they’re fighting for.
Noodle: Thank God someone knows.
Chickie Donohue: Jesus, those guys are putting the horse way in front of the cart.
Red: What do you mean?
Chickie Donohue: I never said I was going to Vietnam. I said I was going to try to go.
Chickie Donohue: Why do they think I’m not going?
Red: Well, no offense, but, come on, Chick. There’s a lot of things you say you’re going to do that you don’t get around to doing because, you know, you get busy.
'You're going to find out it's a lot harder to get out of a war than it is to get into one.' - Harbormaster (The Greatest Beer Run Ever) Share on X
Christine: So, I’m just curious, how many pops in were you when you came up with this brilliant notion?
Chickie Donohue: So, Christine, you saying I’d have to be drunk to want to support my friends in Vietnam?
Mrs. Donohue: You’ll talk him into this foolishness and get him killed.
Mr. Donohue: Stop it, Catherine. No one’s ever gotten killed sleeping till three in the afternoon. Chickie’s fine.
Christine: [after finding a cargo ship heading to Vietnam] Please don’t do this. This is the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Chickie Donohue: Dumber than carrying around signs, calling our friends baby killers?
Christine: Don’t give me that s**t. I wasn’t carrying that sign.
Chickie Donohue: Yeah, but you were marching with someone who was. Just imagine being a soldier, just got home, and that’s the first thing he sees, is that sign.
Christine: You’re going to get yourself killed there.
Chickie Donohue: No, I’m not.
Christine: Yes, you are! I don’t get it. Why are you doing this?
Chickie Donohue: It’s like you said. Everyone’s doing something. I’m doing nothing.
'The truth doesn't hurt us. It's the lies. The lies and the conspiracy to distort the truth.' - Coates (The Greatest Beer Run Ever) Share on X
Captain: S**t’s hit the fan up there. You could be walking into a bloodbath. You know that, right?
Chickie Donohue: Well, he’s my brother.
Captain: Okay. You got three days. It’s 8:05. If you’re not back here in seventy-two hours and one second, you better be dead.
Chickie Donohue: Yes, sir. You have my word, sir!
Chickie Donohue: I just brought him a couple of beers from New York.
Military Policeman: Seriously, pal, why you looking for Collins?
Chickie Donohue: No, I’m being serious. This whole thing’s full of beer from back home.
Erickson: Got some pretty screwy friends, Collins.
Chickie Donohue: Oh, without a doubt. Guess what? This screwy friend just came ten thousand nautical miles to deliver your a** a sudsy thank-you card.
Chickie Donohue: Like my grandfather used to say, always ring the doorbell with your elbow.
Tom Collins: And that, my friends, is called the Irish hello.
'That's what war is. It's one giant crime scene.' - Coates (The Greatest Beer Run Ever) Share on X
Tom Collins: I still can’t believe you came all this way just to bring me a beer.
Chickie Donohue: Not just you. I came for Duggan, Reynolds, Pappas. All the guys.
Tom Collins: That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
Chickie Donohue: You’re kidding me. He thinks I’m CIA? Like James Bond?
Tom Collins: You can’t be serious about this, Chick. Come on, man. You did it. You got me hammered in Vietnam, and I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of laughs about this forever. Let’s quit while we’re ahead, huh?
Chickie Donohue: I didn’t come all this way just to quit after one night.
Tom Collins: What am I supposed to do? Let you go out there like a babe in Toyland and get your brains blown out like Knopf did?
Trailer: