Cheap Radio Days (DVD) (Woody Allen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Radio Days

A standout gem!
I've been hurt in the past by a lot of "classic" Woody Allen films. But this one does not disppoint. I think this is one of his best films. A nostalgic look back on his childhood in the good ole radio days. Although for once, Woody was not the highlight of a Woody movie for me. And I never thought I'd utter thses words in my entire life. But...Mia Farrow was the funniest thing about this movie (and it was a really funny movie by itself). I just loved her eating as people are discussing where to dump her body and my favorite line of her's is upon hearing of the bombing of Pearl Harbor at an inconvenient moment, she asks kind of agitated, "Who is Pearl Harbor?" The second stories would switch, and she'd pop up, I'd already be laughing. And I am by no means a Mia Farrow fan. She was just so broadly funny; maybe that's what she should have done more of. Because usually she plays such dry characters...but this was a welcome change. Woody must have loved her role too. He basically recycled her in Bullets Over Broadway with Jennifer Tilly's ditzy character (also funny). This film was just so real and honest and clearly personal to Woody, that his passion showed in the writing and the acting and made this movie one of my favorites of his (and a young Seth Green did Woody justice too).

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Bittersweet Comedy
The best thing about Woody Allen is his ability to build a movie on episodic material and subplots, without the need for an overarching plot. "Radio Days" is told in anecdotal vignettes, which relate to Allen's memories of radio in the 1940s. These vignettes are seamlessly interwoven, and through them, we come to get a feel for how and where Allen grew up.

Where he grew up was Rockaway, Queens, and -- having been there dozens of times, visiting from my own Brooklyn -- Allen's actual use of the neighborhood locations really places this movie not only in place, but time, as Rockaway Beach has changed so little since the 1940s.

Most memorable are the actors which comprise the ensemble cast: Seth Green plays a young Allen, casted as "Joe"; Julie Kavner and Jeff Tucker play his always bickering parents; Diane Wiest plays his old-maid aunt, Bea. But Mia Farrow as aspiring radio personality Sally White steals the show with her Canarsie accent "Hawk, I heyuh da cannons raw. Is it da king approachin'?" and later blossoms into a radio gossip show hostess, a la Hedda Hopper, replete with a proper Anglicized accent to boot.

Living now in an age when many social critics blame television for driving the American family apart, Allen paints a portrait of a time when it was radio which drew families closer together; all his favorite childhood memories having some connection to a radio program or song, and it is this connection which Allen memorializes, suggesting a time that was not so much more innocent, but one that was more dramatic, classier and less jaded.

DP Carlo diPalma's beautiful use of primary colors and editor Susan Morse's perfectly-timed montage flesh out a gorgeous visual counterpart to the soundtrack, which is brimming over with jazz, big bands, cop dramas, boy crooners, game shows and torch song sirens.

"Radio Days" is, along with "Crimes and Misdemeanors" the closest Allen came to making a perfect movie.

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Very good music, but missing some great songs.
I purchased this soundtrack because it contained some really great music. However, my favorite song, September Song, was missing. If you saw the movie, it was the song that reoccurred numerous times, starting with the wind-swept rainy scene of his home, Rockaway Beach, near the ocean.

Not only that, but that song is near impossible to find now, as I've spent hours searching on the Internet with no luck. Still, there are many other titles I like on the CD. I just wish that were one of them, considering its sort of the theme song that reappeared so many times. Really disappointing.