Radio Days

Radio Days

24/1/1987 1h 25m 7.1/10

Overview

The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.

Director

Woody Allen

Top Billed Cast

Seth Green

Seth Green

Joe

Jeff Daniels

Jeff Daniels

Biff Baxter

Julie Kavner

Julie Kavner

Mother

Mia Farrow

Mia Farrow

Sally White

Robert Joy

Robert Joy

Fred

Danny Aiello

Danny Aiello

Rocco

Reviews

CinemaSerf

CinemaSerf

5/30/2025

7/10

“Joe” (Seth Green) is reminiscing about his childhood in a New York where he lived with his mum and dad and her extended family in some basic and cramped accommodation - it’s a bit like the “Bucket” household from the world of Roald Dahl, replete with cabbage soup, too. This family, and their neighbours, live their lives according to a pattern of routines. From day to day and week to week, they gossip, eavesdrop, work, sleep and chatter but there is one thing that’s a constant. They all listen to the radio. Music, drama, news, comedy and quizzes. Each of them has their favourite as it facilitates their imaginations in a society where even 15c for a secret ring was beyond their economic means. Woody Allen quite engagingly crafts this drama to pair up the characters on the screen with aspects of the radio broadcasts that provided not just factual realities of life as WWII gradually expanded to include the USA but to the more fanciful lives of those stars whom they enviously saw on the big screen. As he looks back on this time, “Joe” finds his memories themselves have started to fade but that the mnemonics provided by his association with the radio at this formative time of his life still provide a template for his, admittedly somewhat rose-tinted, memories. It’s the usual assembly of Woody Allen cast here, but this time his writing carves them out quite quirkily unique roles, like an human jigsaw puzzle that looks improbable until you realise that thanks to the conduit of the wireless, they can all fit together - though it’s not always that tight a fit! Of course there’s the usual slice of Jewish neuroticism included, but here the diverse range of characters and the humour derived from the medium upon which we are reflecting really does either tug at the nostalgia strings you do remember, or maybe at ones you don’t but would like to. Dianne Wiest possibly takes the acting plaudits as the unlucky-in-love “Aunt Bea” but essentially there isn’t an individual star, more a community of family and friends that those of us who grew up in tenements anywhere in the world whilst the radio exercised it’s potent convening powers can associate with. Some fine tunes, too.

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