"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.

| Original Score: B | Jul 8, 2021

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

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

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 20, 2017

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.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2013

The movie's ultimate reliance on wish-fulfillment is downright irresponsible.

| May 20, 2013

It's the kind of story that could have soared in the hands of a visionary director like Terry Gilliam, but becomes strangely earthbound under the direction of Richard Donner.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 20, 2013

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 20, 2013

What you get in Radio Flyer is an unholy brew of whimsy and blasphemy. It flits from the unwatchable to the unbelievable, with nary a pause between them and the effect, to say the least, is unsettling.

| May 20, 2013

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 20, 2013

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.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | May 20, 2013

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.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 20, 2013

A queasy combination of whimsy and child abuse.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 20, 2013

If nothing else, Radio Flyer is an original: The first feel-good movie about child abuse.

| Original Score: C | Sep 7, 2011

One of the most touching films ever made. A must-see

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 26, 2008

A film one would like to like more.

| Apr 15, 2008

This perverse script is flying without a pilot.

| Apr 15, 2008

The resulting film is like a travesty of a Spielberg paean to childhood innocence -- an uplifting fantasy about child abuse and suicide.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 15, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 24, 2007

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.

| Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 7, 2005