Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Julie Kavner, Wallace Shawn, Danny Aiello
Running Time: 85 minutes
Synopsis: Narrator Joe (Woody Allen) recalls childhood memories overlapping with radio's golden era from the late 1930s and early 1940s. Raised in a working class Queens family, Joe's parents (Julie Kavner and Michal Tucker) are loving but always bickering. The household is stuffed with relatives, including Aunt Bea (Dianne Wiest), who is desperately seeking a husband. The radio is the main source of entertainment and news, and Joe recounts vignettes from the swish nightclub-centred lives of radio personalities and celebrities, several featuring cigarette girl Sally (Mia Farrow).
What Works Well: This nostalgia-drenched trip down memory lane accentuates an idealized sense of time and place through the prism of childhood. Director and writer Woody Allen uses the music and radio shows of the era as a soundtrack to a warm but chaotic household filled with (dashed) hopes, (unlikely) dreams, and plenty of banter. A world away but only across town, radio stars and wannabes occupy a glitzy universe of parties, schmoozing, and career-climbing, their elite escapades morphing into perfect escapism for the masses. The ensemble cast (including small roles for Diane Keaton, Robert Joy, Tony Roberts, and Jeff Daniels) shares the kitchen lights and spotlights, Mia Farrow and Dianne Wiest leaving the most animated impressions.
What Does Not Work As Well: Beyond the sense of sentimentality and longing for more innocent days, not much is going on. None of the characters evolve into people worth knowing, and the choppy vignette structure squeezes in plenty of music and short sketches but no continuity and little of substance.
Key Quote:
Narrator: I love old radio stories. And I know a million of 'em.
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