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Woody Allen’s Radio Days (1987) is his most enjoyable and entertaining film and his follow-up to his great masterpiece Hannah and Her Sisters. But for as beautifully nostalgic as it is it is also a wistful film, a longing film. Longing for the days he personally remembers ...
... from his childhood. Woody narrates it and Seth Green plays him. He has said these characters are “cartoon versions” of real people, not the people themselves. But isn’t that, to varying degrees, what we all do when looking at our pasts? Allen while very much a man of his ...
... time has always seemed to me to be filtered through a man of the 1930s and 1940s. You see it throughout his work. He has had a foot in the present and one in the past throughout his career. You see it most clearly in the music he has used in his films and here that really ..
... is on full display. Not for Allen rock or country or pop or, god forbid, hip hip but big band, jazz, and classic pop of mid-century America. At the time Radio Days came out there were complaints that it didn’t have the “depth” of his recent work. We can always count on ...
... critics to be the ones who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Keep artists in their place making films in the same genre and tone. Phooey! Captain Avenger might say. I think there is more depth here than meets the eye but that’s for you to discover and decide ...
... what we get is a series of vignettes - all based on real events, radio stars, and radio shows - linked by one New Jersey Jewish family headed by the marvelous Julie Kavner and Michael Tucker. It’s funny, it’s sharp, it’s FUN. There are also moments of sentiment and love ...
... then we have the other side “the radio folks” with Mia Farrow’s story anchoring that with a host of character actors playing thinly veiled versions of various people Allen most remembers. Farrow has never been more fresh and appealing as in this throwaway scene ...
... and who out there can’t imagine ME holding court in the King Cole Room as 1/2 of “Roger and Irene” although it’s obvious I’d be Irene, not Roger. The film makes you smile at every turn and the fact that I know every single song by heart long before I saw it might ...
... explain why I love it. Of course, by the time I grew up that kind of radio was long dead. I never knew it. But the music of that era filled my house. So it has always felt like MY music. Yes, I am an oddball in that respect. I don’t deny it, I embrace it (I learned that ...
... from Billy). I think Allen weaves so many things together using this music to ground and center the film. There is so much that is funny, that puts a smile on your face and I’m still laughing 36 hours later at that wonderful Kenneth Mars cameo as the rabbi. “What is this ...
.. faithful Indian companion? Such impertinence!” I wonder how many of the radio and inside references would be lost on today’s audiences? Then again, Allen has never been an artist for the masses although in the early 70s it seemed he might be. But he went in a different ...
... direction and I, for one, am grateful. In the 70s, 80s, and 90s I was saying that even his little films and less successful films were more interesting than most of what we were seeing on the screen. I still believe that. Those who don’t think Woody Allen is one of the ...
... major film artists of the last 50 years are fools. You may not understand or like those films but one simply can’t deny that. So even if you feel that way give this gem a chance. It’s pure joy. Highest recommendation. 
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