Radio Flyer 1992

Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune: A queasy combination of whimsy and child abuse. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Radio Flyer is a well-meaning failure, a muddled fantasy about child abuse that ponderously attempts to combine the grace of legend with the earnestness of a public-service announcement. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: A movie is not a public-service announcement, and a movie that tries to squeak by on intentions doesn't generally doesn't get very far. Viewed from any normal perspective, Radio Flyer never takes off. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: Donner and Evans can't find a way to extricate themselves from the impossible structure they have erected. They remain locked into the odd combination of the dreamy and the dreadful that is entirely of their own devising. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: A very odd, expensive, ambitious failure that tries hard to achieve the Spielberg touch but succeeds only in reminding you of how few filmmakers can successfully lay claim to his territory. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: Richard Donner's Radio Flyer is one of those infrequent and embarrassing efforts of a perfectly adequate Hollywood director to make the kind of offbeat movie for which he has no aptitude at all. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: If nothing else, Radio Flyer is an original: The first feel-good movie about child abuse. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Radio Flyer pushes so many buttons that I wanted to start pushing back. Read more

Time Out: It's not a total loss, but the voice-over is infuriatingly overdone, as if the film-makers didn't trust the visuals, the kids are resistible and the tone's discomfortingly cute. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: A film one would like to like more. Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: Donner has a reputation for manhandling scripts, and you get the feeling that buried beneath his stalker-movie techniques is a real movie, with a genuine feel for its characters and its subject. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: It all makes for a soaring -- and tearful -- ending. Read more