Radio Days

1987  PG  COMEDY-DRAMA  1h 25min

CAST— Mia Farrow, Seth Green, Julie Kavner, Josh Mostel, Michael Tucker, Dianne Wiest, Wallace Shawn, Tito Puente, Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Kenneth Mars, Mercedes Ruehl, Rebecca Schaeffer, Todd Field, Larry David

MUSIC— Dick Hyman  DIRECTOR— Woody Allen

     Take a dull dreary stroll down Memory Lane with this nostalgia-filled period piece set in the family-friendly 1940s. Woody Allen narrates this semi-autobiographical tale of a young boy growing up along the New Jersey shoreline, his love divided between his family and the world of radio. The film would have been fine had it focused solely on a boy’s imagination and obsession with radio. But the film gets caught up in the lives and affairs of his large, character-filled family. There is very little story to offer; what there is to examine are various vignettes, scarcely related to one another. The film falls loosely together as an homage to yesteryear, but its impact may be missed, apart from those with a sentimental attachment to the period.

OUR RATING— * ½