Welcome Aboard Kiddie Airways

Radio Flyer is a little seen gem from mega director Richard Donner who is better known for blockbusters like Superman The Movie, The Omen, The Goonies and the Lethal Weapon series. Although it’s a story about kids (specifically two young brothers growing up in the 70’s) it’s tonally aimed at adults in an uplifting film about the power and importance of imagination. In this way it shares the themes of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones and as with that film it could be argued that the dark subject matter (in this case child abuse) is not handled with enough weight.

Although not as tightly told as the superior A Little Princess it shares a quality with the magnificent Shawshank Redemption in that the story is framed by a haunting, powerful narration. In this instance, an unaccredited Tom Hanks plays the grown up incarnation of one of the children and recalls the story to his two children, both of a similar age to him at the time of the main story. The performances are uniformly excellent with Jurassic Park’s Joseph Mazzello and a very young Elijah Wood carrying the who endeavour on their narrow but very capable shoulders. Acknowledgement must also go to Firefly’s Adam Baldwin who get the difficult task of embodying the abusive stepfather in a role where his face remains hidden above the frame to allow him to become a bigger, inhuman, enigmatic menace.

It’s a richly told, touching and affecting tale that gets a touch abstract in it’s storytelling come the end, but which Donner and Hanks skilfully navigate us through.