Retrospective - 1992's Radio Flyer

Does anyone remember this quiet little film by Richard Donner? It's about two brothers in the 1960s (Elijah Wood and a pre-Jurassic Park Joey Mazzello) who love airplanes, monster movies, and all the other cute stuff boys are supposed to love at that age. They also have a good and single mother (Lorraine Bracco) who moves the family across the country to California and eventually remarries to a handsome blue-collar type (Adam Baldwin) who savagely abuses one of the boys without the mother's knowledge. The beatings escalate, and eventually the boys decide to convert their Radio Flyer wagon into a small airplane so the younger boy - the beaten one - can fly away from the abuser.

Tom Hanks narrates the story from the present day, as he tells his own two sons about the true meaning of family and promises and whatnot. The film has a famously ambiguous/nebulous ending that I won't spoil here, but maybe enough of you have seen it to spark a discussion about what you think happened.

So whatcha say, DL?

I was about the same age as the younger brother when this movie came out, and I had a brother, a single mother, and several abusive men who came along in those years. The movie stood out to me and my brother for these reasons, but as Roger Ebert said in his review, I now say it's irresponsible to make a family-friendly movie about child abuse with an "uplifting" message that a child can flee violence on their little red wagon.