Rent Radio Days (1987)

Nostalgia With the Edges Sanded Down - Radio Days review by griggs

Some films feel like nostalgia with the edges sanded down: warm, slightly smug, and determined to be pleasant. That’s Radio Days for me — an affectionate scrapbook of 1940s Brooklyn, narrated from adulthood and stitched together as a run of vignettes.

The ensemble is the main draw. It’s all cramped rooms, overlapping arguments, and relatives who treat sarcasm as a food group. The radio stuff is properly fun too — serials, jingles, broadcast voices — making everyday life sound bigger than it is. Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest, in particular, find tender notes beneath the patter.

Still, I kept wanting a bit more grit — one moment where the sweetness catches and actually stings. Instead it ambles into a wrap-up that plays like the punchline to a very, very long joke: charming, airy, and gone the second the set clicks off. Entertaining enough.

Episodic whimsy. - Radio Days review by Steve

This has attracted considerable critical and popular acclaim and Woody Allen's script was nominated for an Oscar. It is a nostalgic reflection on New York in the late '30s, extending into the early '40s as the US joins WWII. Hard to imagine this isn't Woody's personal response to Federico Fellini's Amarcord.

It portrays an extended family, which Allen has described as a cartoonish version of his own. There's a creditable performance by Seth Green as the latest red haired child actor to play the director as a boy. It reflects on their relationship with the golden age of radio, its stars and the popular songs of the period.

There is a gentle magic. It provokes a smile rather than a laugh, and the reminiscences are familiar (though exaggerated) because they are based on well known radio events, like the panic caused by Orson Welles' famous broadcast of the War of the Worlds, or the coverage of the midwestern child trapped down a well.

The recreation of '30s Brooklyn is convincing, the music is wonderful and it's good to see Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts back in cameos. The dynamic of the family, and the love within it, is palpable. Woody evokes the persistent ache of the passing years, and the living memories of an era about to be consumed by the tide of time.