Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1987

The Contenders:
Au Revoir, Les Enfants
Broadcast News
Hope and Glory
Moonstruck (winner)
Radio Days

Watching Oscar: Radio Days

Film: Radio Days
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

There’s a part of me that loves a nostalgia film. There are plenty of them, a filmmaker reliving his or her past through rose-colored glasses. There are plenty of great ones--Stand By Me comes to mind, as does A Christmas Story. One of my favorites is Woody Allen’s Radio Days, a sweet reminiscence of the time when radio was king, and everyone danced to the tunes that came out of the box in the living room.

That’s really all that Radio Days is, a series of memoirs about life during World War II and before the advent of television. We spend most of our time with Allen’s youthful personality, Joe (Seth Green), but we also meet his extended family, learning a bit about the lives and tribulations of his father (that-guy Michael Tucker), his mother (Julie Kavner), his uncle Abe and aunt Ceil (Josh Mostel and Renee Lippin), his cousin Ruthie (Joy Newman) and especially his aunt Bea (Dianne Wiest). Since the film is a memoir rather than a story, we get vignettes of their life and their attachment to the radio, and how these radio programs define them.