Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16438 in VHS
• Released on: 1998-07-28
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 114 minutes

Customer Reviews

a different view on the ending
I have read many reviews on Radio Flyer, most concerned with the ambiguity of the ending. I saw the movie for the first time a few weeks ago. After watching it, I decided that it had, in fact, been a good movie. It was able to depict many aspects of child abuse, emotionally and physcially, along with the unstableness of the family. However, this alone does not even scratch the surface of the movie's depth. Like I said, after watching the movie, I had decided that it was good. However, if Mike's brother Bobby had flown off and never returned, then where did the turtle in the end come from? The same turtle that they boys had found when they were little, and the same turtle that Bobby took with him on his flight. After this perplexing detail was brought to my attention, I realized that Mike (tom hanks) at the beginning of the movie had said "History is all in the mind of the teller; truth is in the teller". The story recounted by Mike being told to his children was his version of what actually happened to him, and him alone, as a child. After considering this, other facts seemed to make sense. Why had only Bobby been abused? Why hadn't Bobby's flyer ever seem to fail? and for that matter, why hadn't Bobby ever come back? Because Bobby had never existed. In an attempt to escape his own childhood dilemas and tragedies, Mike created an outlet to disguard all his pain. The new idea of this ending made the movie so much better than I had originally perceived it. I'd definitely recommend it, even if it's just to get your own view on the ending :).

Radio Flyer
A reviewer, who decided to remain nameless, reviewed this movie giving it one star. Here's why I disagree. First off, the stepfather wasn't 'faceless'; with his face not being shown, he was meant to represent ANY abusive, alcoholic father or stepfather. Secondly, I was abused by my alcoholic father between the ages of 1 and 6, and the way these children acted was exactly how it is. Let's face it: when you're that young, you don't exactly know how to 'find the help you need', so you feel you don't have a choice but to 'retreat into your own world'. It may not have been healthy or the right thing to do, but that's just how it is most of the time. This film portrayed almost perfectly what it's like to be that young and to be abused, and Joseph Mazzello and Elijah Wood did such a good job playing those boys that I found myself crying through most of the movie, because that's how it is.
My congratulations to all involved with this film. You managed to capture innocence and how it's lost even when, as abused children, we try dearly to hold on to it.
Oh. Also. The damn Flyer is a metaphor for all of you who thought the end was stupid!

A deserving movie-lovers movie
I have read many reviews of this movie, and not just a few here on Amazon. I'm constantly amazed at the negative comments from people who think that this movie recommends a way to deal with child abuse, or that it takes a stand on the subject. It does not. Child abuse is bad, an evil in this world. This movie shows this from the viewpoint of the two boys. As children, they can little understand why this evil has befallen the younger brother, they only know that their Mother was unhappy, and that the new man in her life has made her happy. Loving their mother and wanting her to be happy, they make the best of the situation, and try to get by, to escape into the things boys will escape into. This is not a statement on child abuse: it's a statement about the will to survive, and that of adventure, of these two boys. To view this movie in any other light is in injustice. The acting of the boys is simply tremendous. Sure, the step-father is seldom seen and when seen, from low-angles and stereotyped. But he is seen as the boys see him: a giant, and seldom. This is, after all, their story.