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Bookmark this pageRadio Flyer (1993)
Director: Richard Donner
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
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
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