Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Radio Flyer (1993)

Director: Richard Donner

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

'History is all in the mind of the teller; the truth is in the telling' - so Tom Hanks instructs his young son by way of a preamble to this fanciful coming-of-age tale, which failed to find a theatrical distributor in Britain after bombing in the States. You can see why the script attracted big bucks: it has an accentuated literary air that must have read like 'class', a serious angle - child abuse - and it's all couched in the magic juvenilia of a Spielberg (Donner directed Goonies). It's the story of two brothers, their mother (Bracco), and the violent alcoholic who becomes their stepfather (Adam Baldwin in a pitiless role, photographed Spielberg-style from the waist down). It's not a total loss, but the voice-over is infuriatingly overdone, as if the film-makers didn't trust the visuals, the kids are resistible and the tone's discomfortingly cute.

Author: TCh 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Richard Donner

Producer: Lauren Schuler-Donner

Cast: Lorraine Bracco, John Heard, Elijah Wood, Joseph Mazello, Adam Baldwin, Ben Johnson full cast

Duration: 101 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.