Wall to wall funny Woody Allen

“Radio Days” is a wall to wall funny example of how great it must have been to get a Woody Allen movie at the start of every year. This is the director at his nostalgic best, focusing on the 1940’s where radio reigned supreme. He plays the narrator, who recounts his younger days (played by Seth Green) where morning shows and superhero shows (The Masked Avenger, who, in a great bit of casting that shows the novelty of radio, is played by Wallace Shawn) prove to be a respite from his loud, eccentric family. So into the Masked Avenger is he that in one hilarious scene he steals money he’s supposed to be collecting for Israel so he could buy a decoder ring. Allen’s assertion is that radio was more vivid because of the imagination involved, like when the narrator listens to self-help shows and imagines his constantly feuding parents on there, or how the music we listen to seems to accompany big life events. And through politics, sports, and poignant moments, he shows how it brought people together. The movie is filled with funny, fantastic stories (a starting scene involving burglars and a radio game show is classic). And not just of the family, which includes an Aunt, played by Diane Wiest, haplessly trying to find love over and over again (one time during the biggest radio broadcast in the history of the world) but of starlet’s like Mia Farrow’s air-headed radio ingenue who equally haplessly wants to be the next big thing. As Allen closes the film, he does long for the days before video killed the radio star, and what’s more, makes you respect this medium that really captured the attention, and expanded the view, of the world as a whole.

** I’m doing a nostalgia series on 1987 in film, part of a larger review/ranking series on the 80’s.

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