MovieChat Forums > Good Morning, Vietnam (1988) Discussion > Idiotic line: 'This will not look good o...

Idiotic line: 'This will not look good on a resume!'

posted 12 years ago by steedom
16 replies | jump to latest

During his confrontation with his Vietnamese friend (who turned out to be a Vietcong terrorist), Cronauer angrily berates him for exploiting Cronauer's friendship to carry out violence on civilians.

His VC friend retorts that US soldiers killed his family members and didn't care who they were killing. It was a pretty dramatic scene that drew in the audience.

At the end of the confrontation, Cronauer shouts, "this will not look good on a resume!"

I thought this was a very stupid line that diminished the drama between Cronauer and his VC friend. I think it was put in the script as a signal to the audience that Robin Williams is this funny comedian, so we should all expect him to say something funny and laugh at it. That joke wasn't appropriate and really didn't belong in the scene at all.

It further strengthened the argument IMO that Robin Williams is not very funny, although he may not have had a hand in coming up with that line.

[–] Dave_at_23 12 years ago

Your opinion, and you are entitled to it. I personally "get" Robin Williams's humor and did very much understand where that line was coming from.
It was Cronauer's attempt at realizing the irony of the situation.
His best friend in Vietnam was the enemy, and it wouldn't look good for him to tell anyone that fact.

[–] steedom 12 years ago

It was the kind of dumb punchline you would expect in the last box of a newspaper comic strip.

The problem with this movie was that it was billed as a comedy, and with Robin Williams as the star, that was the expectation. That's why we had dumb lines like what RW said above.

[–] nutsberryfarm 12 years ago

yeah. strange line. if he had said 'this will not make a curriculum vitae shine!'...that would have been funny.

A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

[–] djmattm2002-913-491227 11 years ago

For some reason, I always imagine hearing Hauk's or Dickerson's voice when I read posts like this. I don't mean to offend...just somehow it reminds me of the two characters that hated Cronauer

[–] avortac4 (3742) 2 years ago

"The problem with this movie was that it was billed as a comedy, and with Robin Williams as the star, that was the expectation. That's why we had dumb lines like what RW said above. "

I think it's the opposite.

Because this movie was SUPPOSED to be a comedy, but audiences expect the 'eternal Vietnam war movie tropes', it _HAD_ to be injected with "sad and dramatic scenes", which really drags a comedy down.

In defence of the movie, the comedy isn't funny anyway, so this movie can fully bask in its 'dramatic trope crap' all it wants and not lose anything. That line wasn't funny, so it fits this movie perfectly.

[–] Tim-O-T 12 years ago

It's called 'comic relief'! It was an intense scene and this line breaks that tension.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Degree7 11 years ago

Sometimes even in life's darkest moments there is a certain perverse irony, as a previous poster put it.

I think even though it's a tragic matter, you just have to laugh at certain situations. Which I think was a certain theme of the film.... guess the OP missed the boat on that one!

Limit of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief: directly proportional to it's awesomeness.

[–] Reefmonkey 11 years ago

"This will not look good on a resume" was a go-to line of Robin Williams' back in the mid-late 80s, that he obviously thought was funny enough to overuse. He had used the same line just the year before in "Club Paradise", when Jimmy Cliff's character is going to lead a civil war on a small Caribbean island, Williams' character shouts at him "Go on and start a revolution! This will not look good on a resume, you know?"

[–] greatdarkspot-1 11 years ago

Oddly enough, Williams had used that exact same line in Club Paradise to Jimmy Cliff when he went to go and raise an armed revolt against Prime Minister Solomon Grundy. "Go ahead and start a revolution! That not going to look good on your resume, you know!"

[–] joan6350 11 years ago

I thought it was funny and so did the people watching with me.

[–] joed1667 11 years ago

I thought it was one of the best lines of the movie!