Radio Flyer

PG-13

1992

1h 53m

Fantasy

TRAILER

for Radio Flyer: Trailer 1

List

35%

40 Reviews

Tomatometer

72%

10,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

When their parents divorce, brothers Mike (Elijah Wood) and Bobby (Joseph Mazzello) move to a California suburb with their mother, Mary (Lorraine Bracco). Soon after, she remarries a man (Adam Baldwin) who insists on being called "the King" and who beats young Bobby when Mary isn't around. The boys try to escape their harsh home life through fantasy, most of it centered on their Radio Flyer wagon. Inspired by the legend of another neighborhood boy, they hope to make it fly.

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Critics Consensus

Overlaying its whimsical concept onto a gritty story of domestic abuse, Radio Flyer is a family film that is too harrowing for children and too saccharine for their parents.

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Audience Member

Sei lá, gosto muito, marcou minha infância

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/15/23

Full Review

christopher c. m

I know the movie needs a villain, but it doesn't need to be a one note drunk stepfather that's more cliché than the school bully. The kids are flat and also one note, too boring to be even count as Kennys. The charcters don't have an last names or in the case of the villain, a real name at all. I know "The King" is a nickname but fully flushed characters need full names. Also, the marketing has this like an "ET" or "Explorers" light hearted family romp when the real movie has very little to do with the radio flyer. The bulk of the movie is forced melodrama and the King beating the shit out of the kids. It's an ugly movie, an ugly boring movie.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Watching this with my mother, she thinks that the boy committed suicide in the end. I always thought he did manage to fly and escape. The ending and how you see it makes the whole movie magical or cripplingly depressing.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/26/23

Full Review

steve d

I'm not sure who it was made for or why.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

03/30/23

Full Review

mccane m

A touching exploration of childhood, trauma, hope, imagination, brotherhood, and family. I was pleasantly surprised. Elijah Wood and Joseph Mazzello are perfect.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I love this movie, you have to step into the shoes of an abused child, to understand the deeper parts. I had a radio flyer wagon and as a child, my first escape (several blocks down a steep hill) was in that wagon! I had several pets that "disappeared" and if you have ever experienced any sort of disassociation or PTSD you can understand this movie. Those of us who don't die disappear into our minds in order to survive.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/15/23

Full Review

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Richard Donner

Director

Elijah Wood

Mike

Joseph Mazzello

Bobby

Adam Baldwin

The King

Lorraine Bracco

Mary

John Heard

Daugherty

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Radio Flyer: Trailer 1

1:58

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William Thomas

Empire Magazine

The nostalgic details are charming, there are excellent if skimpy effects (a giant buffalo, a Bigfoot cameo) and the children (Elijah Wood, Joseph Mazzello) are quite wonderful, but it's a puzzling, borderline distasteful film.

Rated: 3/5

May 20, 2013

Full Review

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.

Rated: 2/4

May 20, 2013

Full Review

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.

Rated: 2/4

May 20, 2013

Full Review

Brian Orndorf

Blu-ray.com

"Radio Flyer" has managed to acquire something of a fanbase, with those sensitive to the director's earnest intent able to embrace all the shortcomings of the picture, and celebrate its unnervingly accurate read of resilient juvenile energy.

Rated: B

Jul 8, 2021

Full Review

Malcolm Johnson

Hartford Courant

Too dark and upsetting for the family trade, this tale of a sadistic stepfather takes too many wrong moves to satisfy adults.

Jun 7, 2018

Full Review

Brian Costello

Common Sense Media

Child abuse, alcoholism in coming-of-age tearjerker.

Rated: 2/5

Jun 20, 2017

Full Review

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Synopsis

When their parents divorce, brothers Mike (Elijah Wood) and Bobby (Joseph Mazzello) move to a California suburb with their mother, Mary (Lorraine Bracco). Soon after, she remarries a man (Adam Baldwin) who insists on being called "the King" and who beats young Bobby when Mary isn't around. The boys try to escape their harsh home life through fantasy, most of it centered on their Radio Flyer wagon. Inspired by the legend of another neighborhood boy, they hope to make it fly.

Director: Richard Donner
Production Co: Columbia Pictures Corporation
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Fantasy
Original Language: English
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 1, 2011
Box Office (Gross USA): $4.0M
Runtime: 1h 53m
Sound Mix: Surround

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