Radio Days

Radio Days is so ambitious and so audacious that it almost defies description. It's a kaleidoscope of dozens of characters, settings and scenes - the most elaborate production Allen has ever made - and it's inexhaustible, spinning out one delight after another. Read full review

So Woody Allen has turned nostalgic for at least a movie. He remembers the old days. He knows it's a cliche to think of those old days, whenever they were, as simpler, sweeter times. But Allen can turn the cliche on its head, and convince us that they were indeed, if not more innocent, more interesting times. And not just for him. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

The brilliance of the film is the way in which Allen pays tribute to radio while subtly condemning television, which, he seems to be arguing, has partially robbed us of our imaginations. Read full review

A movie that draws you close to it like listeners around that glowing radio dial. Read full review

Although lacking the bite and depth of his best work, Radio Days is one of Woody Allen's most purely entertaining pictures. It's a visual monolog of bits and pieces from the glory days of radio and the people who were tuned in. Read full review

As free in form as it is generous of spirit. Read full review

Humane and perceptive memoir from Allen, with a pleasant visual nostalgia and the usual slew of impressive performances. Read full review

Radio had a mystical power that television never has been able to re-create. Its sound effects and faceless voices stirred the imagination and quite often the heart. Allen captures its essence with an anguished broadcast from the scene of an accident, an attempted rescue of a young girl wedged in a well shaft. [20 Feb 1987, p.1D]

Allen presents a host of anecdotes and remembrances of things past, but one wishes it could have been slightly more cohesive. One of the joys in this picture is the soundtrack of songs of the period that will delight anyone who lived in those radio days. Read full review

Radio Days maintains a joyful balance between reality and a world of dreams. [14 Mar 1987]

It's pure nostalgia--the past sweetened and trivialized. The mood is soft regret: he treats the old songs as a value that we've lost.

Like a box of sampler candies, Radio Days offers a wide assortment of bite-size goodies. They can't all be to your taste, but the sweetness lingers from the best. [02 Feb 1987, p.72]

Childhood anecdotes and charming vignettes are set against bright-light, big-city sets, a-dazzle with beautiful players. All that doesn't disguise the emptiness at the center of Radio Days, which misses the momentum that comes with a plot. Read full review

Without a story or, for that matter, any theme but a kind of aimless nostalgia, you peel and peel away at it only to find, in the end, nothing. Read full review

It's a great idea for a movie, but Allen fatally opts for a Fellini: Amarcord approach of formless narrative, larger-than-life coincidence, and rambling ruminations on what times there used to be. Read full review

Allen`s over-reliance on narration to create his emotional effects reminds us that his art is primarily, if not exclusively, a verbal one. He has never engaged the visual side of movies, never grasped film`s capacity to express emotions and ideas in images. Allen is a teller, not a shower. Read full review

Radio Days, is an occasionally charming trifle, a cinematic bauble that - held up to just the right light, soft and undemanding - sparkles quite prettily. But add just a hint of the glare cast by a raised expectation, and this lightweight thing fades right out of view. [30 Jan 1987]