Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Radio Days Blu-ray Movie Review

"It's so beautiful. Boy, what a world. It could be so wonderful, if it wasn't for certain people."

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 7, 2024

The nostalgia film (for lack of a better genre name) is a staple of Hollywood, or at least it once was, connecting audiences in the present with the fading, forgotten traditions, culture and everyday life of years long past. In the case of Radio Days, a time before television begat big screen displays, 4K Ultra HD presentations of movies in personal home theaters, surround sound systems with endless speakers, and the whole of the world at one's interlinked, Wifi-bolstered fingertips. Most of us can't imagine such a world, which is why filmmakers adore transporting us across time and space to things wholly unfamiliar to the young but pure comfort food to those who remember simpler times and reminisce about a place they once called home.

A middle-aged man looks back on his childhood in Rockaway, N.Y., in a series of vignettes focused on the golden days of radio. Joe (writer/director Woody Allen), who narrates, is portrayed as a teenager in the film by Seth Green. Eccentric relatives and radio personalities inhabit various stories, including an unlucky aunt (Dianne Wiest), a cigarette girl (Mia Farrow) with career ambitions, and two burglars with excellent timing. Young Joe eventually involves his friends in a scam to earn a decoder ring, and we inhabit the world of 1930s and '40s New York as he comes of age. The film also stars Jeff Daniels, Diane Keaton, Larry David, Hy Anzell, Danny Aiello, Wallace Shawn, Mike Starr, Michael Tucker, Paul Herman, Sydney Blake, Julie Kavner, Leah Carrey, Gina DeAngelis, Renee Lippin, William Magerman, Denise Dumont, Todd Field, Kitty Carlisle, Julie Kurnitz, Don Pardo and Tony Roberts.

Click here to read Jeffrey Kauffman's review of Radio Days, which he says "ends up being a rather entrancing combination of rose-colored glasses nostalgia and clear- headed reminiscing", likening it to "listening to two radio stations simultaneously, and rather miraculously, there’s not even one hint of static."

Radio Days Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

I was less than impressed with the 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer featured on Sandpiper Pictures' Blu-ray release of Radio Days than my more forgiving colleague Jeffrey Kauffman, whose review of the film's limited edition Twilight Time release was published in 2014. The two presentations are quite similar, and quite possibly minted from the same master. Chalk up two reviewers' divergent takes to subjectivity, or perhaps expectations being more stringent today than they were ten years ago. Either way, Radio Days doesn't fare poorly; it simply doesn't hit as hard as it should or grab my attention as much as I had hoped. Softness presides over much of the image, which isn't an immediate negative by any stretch of the imagination, but is something that a proper remastering presumably could have eliminated had a studio or distributor returned to the original negative and began from scratch. Whatever qualities Radio Days possesses in its original photography isn't revealed to us here, and we're left to scratch our heads; my guess being a new master would indeed do the trick and revitalize the image. (But as I love to add, who can say?)

To my eye, the clarity of the picture we get is thanks to less discerning artificial sharpening and other heavier handed techniques that create more of an illusion of restoration and improvement rather than offering a truly restored and improved picture. Grain is intact but bears the slightly over-sharpened appearance of a film that's been subjected to a bit too much digital tinkering. Still, without a from-the-elements remaster, it's difficult to tell whether or not this is merely the movie as it was shot by cinematographer Carlo Di Palma. Colors are largely warm, though primaries and skintones bear the skewed brunt of a slight yellowed-newspaper tint (possibly intentional, considering the period), and both black levels and contrast are filmic and satisfying. Detail is decent too (bearing in mind what I mentioned before), with refined grain, some solid texturing and crisp edges. Banding and artifacting are absent. Some haloing creeps in here and there, though nothing too serious. And technically the overall transfer strikes me as sound.

Radio Days Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix is perfectly suited to the 1930s and '40s setting, and brings with it nicely prioritized dialogue, narration, and music cues (many of which still infuse the story with real moxie). There are hints of crackling and popping inherent to the original sound design, making them a cinch to overlook as part of the texture of the film's tone, and effects are relatively naturalistic, even if they exhibit some of the tinniness of classic studio-born sound effects common to movies of the era. Combined, the mono track's qualities pair well with Radio Days, even aurally enhancing the impact of its throwback nostalgia. I was quite pleased.

Radio Days Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is the same music-only track included on the Twilight Time limited edition Blu-ray. That's by no means a bad thing, but it will also only appeal to those with a fondness for movie scores and the patience to listen to the entirety of Radio Days' soundtrack, sans dialogue.

Radio Days Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Growing up is hard to do, and even more so in the era of the Depression and a looming second World War. Allen's Radio Days tackles it with charm and pizazz, creating something that simultaneously remains fresh and nostalgic. Not the easiest two modes to balance. Fortunately, Sandpiper's Blu-ray release is a solid one, with above average video quality and a strong DTS-HD Master Audio mono offering. More extras would have been welcome (wouldn't they always?) but fans of the film will find enough value here to justify the cost of admission.